http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...s/15506753.htm

Alvine Pharmaceuticals are developing products to treat gluten intolerance.

Anybody know what they are developing? What is ALV001
Anne

A constraining life-long gluten-free-diet is the only current treatment for celiac disease. The human gastrointestinal tract does not possess the enzymatic equipment to efficiently cleave the gluten-derived proline-rich peptides driving the abnormal immune intestinal response in coeliac patients. Oral therapy by exogenous prolyl-endopeptidases able to digest ingested gluten was therefore propounded as an alternative treatment to the diet. The feasibility of this approach is discussed by confronting recent data on the intestinal transport of gliadin peptides, properties of available enzymes and preliminary clinical assays. Development of new enzymes or enzymatic cocktail offers potentially more potent therapeutic tools that need however meticulous evaluation based on clinical, biological and histological criteria.
Oral proteases: a new approach to managing coeliac disease
PMID: 16950833


Celiac disease is caused by an immune response to the dietary protein gluten. The only available treatment is the strict exclusion of gluten from the diet; however, this is marred by the virtual omnipresence of this protein. The enzymatic degradation of gluten might become an alternative to the gluten-free diet, and recent work indicates that such approaches are getting close to being tested in clinical trials.
Enzymatic gluten detoxification: the proof of the pudding is in the eating!
PMID: 16934352 Aug 2006

Here's a bit more.

http://www.pharmalive.com/News/index...tegoryid=36,61


as many as one in one hundred individuals suffer from celiac sprue, yet there is no drug therapy available.

Oh the horror...oh the humanity...

Hmmm, I wonder what the side effects will be?

Just for grins, I thought I look up to see what Dr. Fasano & Alba Therapeutics have been up to.

Safety and Tolerability Study of AT1001 in Celiac Disease Subjects.
http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct/sho...362856?order=2

Time to get out those Lab rat whiskers??

Thanks Al.

Here is an article about Chaitan Khosla, the founder of Alvine. http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_...100672&org=NSF
Here are the articles that Dr. Khosla has helped author http://lib.bioinfo.pl/auth:Khosla,C
Anne

I think what would be interesting is if they had a drug that you could take to help heal your intestines, but not as a substitute for a gluten-free diet. My Dad is a doctor and my Mom is a nurse, and they come from the generation of "just take a pill and you'll be better". We all know that you have to make lifestyle changes sometimes.

I've been thinking about leaky gut and zonulin, and if there was a way to create a substance to help heal the leaky gut and heal your villi faster, I think that's worth researching. I'm not done with wondering about the causes of intestine damage and leaky gut syndrome. There are just too many people that are sensitive to gluten that end up sensitive to other foods as well. I don't think it's not natural to have to limit foods in your diet. There is something that we are doing in our modern lifestyle to bring on this modern ailment of leaky gut syndrome. Some say it's antibiotics and NASIDs. I've read some other theories too about heavy metal toxicity or infectious diseases. Am I getting off topic here?

I do think it would be nice to have something to take as a preventative when you go out to a restaurant and you are afraid you are going to get glutened. I know this happened to me a few weeks ago, even though I went over the possible senarios with my waiter. He didn't end up preparing the food or serving it, so god knows what happened. I suppose I should get some digestive enzymes again to help with this.

Claire