People with celiac sprue, also called celiac disease, cannot tolerate the protein gluten in their diet. Gluten is present in grains like wheat, barley, and rye. When gluten is ingested by a celiac patient, it sets off an inflammatory reaction that damages the small intestine, leading to malabsorption, an autoimmune-like response, and many other complications. The only effective therapy for celiac disease is complete dietary exclusion of gluten. However, the ubiquitous nature of gluten poses a constant threat to celiacs, and a majority of celiac patients who adopt a restrictive diet still exhibit structural and functional gut abnormalities.
"Non-dietary therapies that allow celiac patients to safely incorporate low-to-moderate levels of gluten into their daily diet would be of considerable benefit," explains study leader Dr. Chaitan Khosla, from Stanford University and Celiac Sprue Research Foundation. "Having demonstrated earlier that certain types of enzymes can detoxify gluten, our laboratory set out to devise an optimal oral enzyme therapy for celiac sprue by borrowing from nature. In germinating barley seed, gluten serves as a nutritious storage protein that is efficiently digested by enzymes. One enzyme, EP-B2, plays a crucial role in this process by breaking gluten proteins after glutamine residues, which comprise one-third of all amino acid residues in gluten."
Dr. Khosla's group used recombinant bacteria to produce a form of EP-B2 that only activates under acidic conditions similar to the conditions found in the h
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Contact: Heidi Hardman
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Cell Press
23-Jun-2006