BTG International backs coeliac disease JV

A vaccine for coeliac disease is the focus of a joint venture between the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne Health and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI), in a project that has the backing of international VC group BTG International.

The project centres on a discovery made four years ago by RMH and WEHI researcher and gastroenterologist Dr Bob Anderson, while he was a post-doc at the University of Oxford. His research forms the basis for patents held by BTG, which are the keystone of the project.

Anderson found that people suffering from coeliac disease -- an autoimmune disease affecting the lining of the small intestine, caused by an intolerance to the gluten protein of wheat, barley and rye -- were reacting to the same gluten protein epitope, and shared the immune receptor HLA-DQ2.

The discovery opens the doors for improved diagnostic tools and potential therapeutics for the disease, which is estimated to affect as many as 100,000 Australians, although only one in ten sufferers of the condition is correctly diagnosed.

If left untreated, coeliac disease can lead to a number of other diseases including juvenile (type 1) diabetes, osteoporosis and gastrointestinal cancer. The only way to treat it is by a completely gluten-free diet, and even trace amounts of gluten can cause a reaction. Now with the backing of BTG, Anderson and his colleagues plan to take the next step and develop a vaccine or immunotherapy to treat and prevent the disease.

The first step will be to precisely elucidate the gluten protein sequence responsible for triggering the adverse immune response.

"In the next 18 months, we hope to completely define the toxic part of gluten," Anderson said. Following that, a vaccine based on the sequence will be designed and tested in pre-clinical animal studies before going on to test it in clinical trials.

Anderson stressed that it could take as long as ten years for a vaccine to be developed. Successful trials could lead to similar therapeutics for other autoimmune diseases including type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.

Another possibility, he said, was development of wheat varieties with gluten proteins genetically modified to remove or alter the toxic sequence to a non-toxic form.