The very first experiments with vaccination-based allergy treatments were carried out more than 85 years ago. It was the pioneering work of a Danish doctor and a Danish chemist in the 1920s that paved the way for the development of ALK's allergy vaccines, now a recognized and well documented treatment for allergic diseases.
In a cabinet at ALK's Headquarters in Hørsholm, Denmark stands an old glass vial containing the residues of a white powder. Neat handwriting on its yellowed label reveals it to contain an extract of goose down, number 101, produced on June 9, 1923 by chemist P.C.T. Barfod of the University Hospital in Copenhagen. Tattered logbooks tell how he painstakingly produced and tested extracts of most of the things that can trouble allergy sufferers.
Barfod had taken over the work on these extracts from doctor Kaj H. Baagøe that same year. Hoping to find permanent employment, Baagøe had headed across the Atlantic to the USA in 1920 where he first learned of the mysteries of allergy from the world's first allergologists. Here he discovered how to use allergen extracts on the skin to test whether patients were allergic to a substance.
He also took an interest in how the same extracts could be used as a treatment to gradually acclimatize patients so that they could once again tolerate exposure to whatever triggered their allergy.
However, he was unable to find permanent employment in the USA and returned home to work in the University Hospital's paediatric department. This kept him so busy that he had to cut down on his work on the extracts, and so in 1923 he offered to hand over his baby to Barfod, who had the right aptitude and a finely tuned nose for business.
Barfod agreed to continue Baagøe's groundbreaking work and embarked on the development of a long series of allergen extracts which he described in detailed recipe books. Barfod's taking over of Baagøe's work marked the start of the business that today bears the name ALK.
Back in the paediatric department, Baagøe kept up his interest in allergy and carried out a number of studies of asthma in children. This work resulted in a doctoral thesis where he observed a clear link between asthma and allergy. He was therefore able to dismiss the established view that these children's wheezing and laboured breathing was due to hysteria transferred from the mother and should be beaten out of them.
The birth of ALK
Records from the Frihavn pharmacy, which Barfod took over in 1928, reveal that by the 1930s he had begun to test the allergen extracts not only in the diagnosis of allergies but also in the treatment of allergy sufferers. Thus the foundations were laid for the development of today's allergy vaccines.
By the time Barfod retired 39 years later, he had built up ALK - Allergologisk Laboratorium København (Copenhagen Allergology Laboratory) - on the basis of his work, first as part of the pharmacy and later as an independent company. Since then the acquisition of competitors and relevant suppliers of raw materials, together with the formation of subsidiaries, has led to the creation of the world's leading group of companies in allergy vaccines and allergen technology.
Since the early basic research, work on allergen extracts and allergy vaccines has now evolved into an established and recognized science. Intensive research in both the pharmaceutical and biotechnological fields has helped to cement ALK's position at the scientific cutting edge.