Allergy shares sneeze

Shares in Allergy Therapeutics plunged 22pc after America's drugs regulator froze a trial of its hayfever vaccine when a trial patient fell ill.

Allergy, which has one of the most advanced portfolios of drugs in Britain's biotechnology sector, said it was "collaborating fully" with the US Food and Drug Administration to discover why the patient developed numbness several weeks after receiving the experimental vaccine.

Allergy's vaccine, Pollinex Quattro, is already used in Europe under controlled conditions and has been taken by about 90,000 patients, without serious side effects being discovered.

Ibraheem Mahmood, an analyst at Investec, said: "The Food and Drug Administration is the most conservative regulator in the world. If we had to guess we would say this was caution by them and that it is unlikely to be caused by the drug."

source:www.telegraph.co.uk