EP-B2 - Stanford and Gluten

[Zonulin]

This is probably old news for most of you: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=45935

Karen

[annelb]

"Our results suggest that recombinant EP-B2 should be effective as supportive therapy to help celiacs cope with the 'hidden' gluten in everyday life, and that a two-enzyme cocktail containing PEP and EP-B2 may even allow celiacs to resume a more normal diet in the future,"

It would be wonderful not to worry about small amounts of gluten.

Anne

[Zonulin]

I'll add some more: http://www.rxpgnews.com/research/gastroenterology/article_4544.shtml "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 human stomach. The researchers demonstrated that EP-B2 efficiently digested gluten protein under gastric conditions and, importantly, EP-B2 was most specific for those parts of gluten that are known to trigger celiac pathogenesis. In a second study, the researchers went on to devise an even more potent double enzyme therapy for detoxifying gluten.

EP-B2 was tested in combination with another well-characterized enzyme called PEP that breaks gluten protein after proline residues. Like glutamine, proline is also abundant in inflammatory gluten peptides. At very high gluten loads, where neither PEP nor EP-B2 alone could detoxify gluten quickly enough to prevent inflammation, a PEP and EP-B2 combination completely abolished gluten immunotoxicity within ten minutes under simulated gastric and duodenal conditions.

In this tag-team therapy, EP-B2 first cleaved gluten into small pieces under gastric conditions that were then easier for PEP to fully detoxify under duodenal conditions. "Our results suggest that recombinant EP-B2 should be effective as supportive therapy to help celiacs cope with the 'hidden' gluten in everyday life, and that a two-enzyme cocktail containing PEP and EP-B2 may even allow celiacs to resume a more normal diet in the future," offers Dr. Khosla.

- June issue of Chemistry and Biology
and http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/jpet.106.104315v1 Less invasive than changing the structure of the cell walls (AT-1001). I'm wondering if EP-B2 will be able to "travel" outside the gastro tract in those with leaky guts...:confused:

Karen