FIRM TRIES TO ENGINEER SNEEEZELESS KITTEN FOR ALLERGIC CAT FANS.

Byline: Brent Hopkins Staff Writer

Finicky pet lovers can already pick from dogs that don't bark, birds that don't fly and skunks that don't smell. Soon - perhaps - cats that won't make you sneeze could be added to the list.

Though it sounds far-fetched, Simon Brodie swears it's true - and experts concede it is possible. But whether his West Los Angeles company will produce a genetically modified hypoallergenic cat in 2006 as promised remains to be seen.

Though the starting price for the most basic model, a British shorthair, is a hefty $5,000, Brodie thinks his cats will bring in billions by 2010.

``I know this sounds crazy, but we'll have the standard, then the luxury ones between $7,000 and $8,000,'' said Brodie, chairman and chief executive officer of Allerca. ``Then the exotics, which we'll only do a limited edition of maybe 1,000 a year or so, they'll be $10,000 or more.''

Before he gets there, he'll have to surmount several scientific obstacles and a lawsuit alleging he stole the idea.

While the science exists to remove specific proteins, some experts question whether the procedure will truly work. No one has yet successfully produced a hypo-allergenic cat.

The concept was first attempted by a company called Transgenic Pets LLC, now based in Colorado. Started by Dr. David Avner, an emergency room physician with a background in allergy studies, the company made headlines in 2001 for its attempts to produce a cat. When funding dried up, work ceased and Avner continues looking for investors to move forward.

The procedure calls for altering cats' genetic structure to silence the gene that expresses the protein. The modified embryos are then implanted into surrogate cat mothers. Brodie says his company's San Diego lab expects to produce its first cat within a year, when they will be given to volunteers to ensure there are no problems. Delivery to customers will ramp up in the following three years.

Skeptics wonder whether it's possible to alter feline genetics enough to prevent them from producing the Fel d 1 protein that causes wheezing and runny noses. The protein, excreted in a cat's saliva when it licks itself, can be extremely durable, so attempts to stamp it out are no easy task.

``The concept's intriguing, reducing the expression of Fel d 1,'' said Dr. Marc Riedl, an instructor at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine specializing in clinical immunology and allergies. ``But it's pretty expensive for something we don't know if it'll really work. I'd wait to see if it's effective before I paid that much money for something like this.''

While Riedl said it was possible to suppress the protein, he said there are others that plague allergy sufferers, so knocking out one wouldn't necessarily alleviate all problems. Fel d 1 also has such potency and stays active for so long, even tiny secretions could build up enough to affect extremely sensitive allergy sufferers.

Removing the protein could cause other problems for the cat, according to Leslie Lyons, a geneticist and assistant professor with the University of California, Davis, school of veterinary medicine. Lyons, who specializes in inherited diseases in cats, said that single genes often affect radically different parts of a cat's anatomy; the same gene that causes cats to have all-white fur also predisposes them toward hearing disorders, for example.

``I don't think anyone knows what else the protein does,'' Lyons said. ``It probably has some other function in the cat's body ... we really don't know until they actually come out with the cats.''

Even without a live prototype, Brodie, a Sherman Oaks resident, says he's received tens of thousands of requests from clients who want to be added to a waiting list. An undisclosed number of customers put down $500 deposits on the prospective pets, which Allerca will refund if it's unable to produce viable felines.

``If we reach production, it'll be $1.5 billion in sales each year,'' Brodie said. ``There are very few people in the world with the capability to do this - and they're all working for us.''

Except Transgenic's Avner, who sued Brodie last December in Denver federal court, alleging that Brodie approached him earlier in 2004 as an investor in Transgenic.

``I thought we had a good business relationship that we were in a position to push forward,'' Avner said by telephone. ``He decided he no longer wanted to pursue the venture.''

Avner's suit alleges Brodie made off with his trade secrets and violated a non-disclosure agreement.

Brodie declined to discuss the lawsuit beyond saying that he expected it to be resolved soon.

Legal controversy aside, many believe there's a market for the pricey pets. Cat lovers already fork over thousands for premium breeds, so taking out the sneeze factor, which afflicts some 30 million Americans, makes for an easy-to-sell product.

``If the allergy really bothers them, it affects their life, their activities and even their social life - it's embarrassing to sneeze, always having the Kleenex in one hand,'' said Dr. Nasser Redjal, a Van Nuys allergist. ``I had one patient tell me she was willing to get rid of her husband but not her cat.''

Susan Logan, editor of the Irvine-based monthly magazine Cat Fancy said the science holds hope for pet owners. Combined with Sausalito-based Genetic Savings & Clone's $50,000 cloned kittens, the first of which appeared in December, she said the pets of the future have finally arrived.

``Genetic engineering's an amazing science,'' Logan said. ``A couple years ago we would have thought this was far off in the future, but it's here. A lot of people who are really passionate about cats, but can't have them, would want to have one of these.''

That's the exact kind of person Allerca's going for, using its chairman's personal experience as a guide. Brodie - who made his money providing services to high-tech companies in the dot-com era - paid several thousand dollars for Shango, a rare Savannah. He said the jaguar-spotted feline makes makes many of his friends break out with the sniffles but Shango isn't about to leave.

``Suppose I meet a girl, she moves in and she's allergic,'' Brodie mused. ``I'm not going to get rid of my cat and I'm probably not going to want to get rid of her, either.''

Brent Hopkins, [phone]

brent.hopkins(at)dailynews.com