celiac disease research

Researcher, scientist and leading authority on celiac disease Dr. Alessio Fasano has responded to a recent study claiming to find no significant gluten transfer when kitchen appliances and utensils were used for both gluten-free and gluten-containing foods.

In a brief video (see below) posted on YouTube, Fasano, who directs the Center for Celiac Research at Massachusetts General Hospital, says the study poses some thought-provoking questions. However, he warns that other factors should be considered.

“There is a cumulative effect of cross-contamination that may eventually break a tolerance…with all the consequences that come with that,” Fasano says in the video.

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The study was conducted by Children’s National Hospital and appeared in the journal Gastroenterology. The authors tested three scenarios where it was thought that gluten transfer could be high enough to pose a gluten exposure risk for someone with celiac disease—in general, greater than 20 parts per million (ppm) or .002%. It found less gluten transfer than expected in several everyday kitchen scenarios.

Fasano, who wrote the landmark 2003 study that established celiac disease affects one in 133 Americans, noted the recent study was not a large one. He stressed that the results should not justify a relaxation in current food preparation guidelines for people with celiac disease. 

“I think it’s very provocative,” Fasano says of the new study in the video. “I think it’s opened up questions that we never ask ourselves, but I personally believe that we have to have a word of caution.”

Three researchers have received more than $500,000 from the Celiac Disease Foundation including doctors from Boston Children’s Hospital, Columbia University and the University of Chicago. 

Valerie Abadie, PhD of the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center, is the most recent recipient for her promising celiac research. Abadie is one of three researchers who earned the foundation’s 2019 Young Investigator Research Grant Award and was given $180,000. 

The first two recipients are Jocelyn Silvester, MD, PhD of Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School who was awarded $180,000 and Benjamin Lebwohl, MD, MS of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University who was awarded $145,650.

For her research, Dr. Abadie will be employing specially developed mouse models that mimic celiac disease to learn if blocking B cells can mitigate or prevent damage to the intestinal villi when someone with celiac disease ingests gluten.

Kristin Yarema, PhD, a member of the Celiac Disease Foundation’s board of directors and a vice president at Amgen, explained the research’s importance.

“We already have medicines that can ablate B cells that will soon be relatively inexpensive generics (anti-CD20 medications),” said Yarema.“If Dr. Abadie’s work demonstrates that B cells are a primary mediator, we could probably interest someone relatively quickly in doing clinical studies. Given that the medications are already approved by the FDA, timelines are vastly shorter and de-risked. I see this proposal as most directly/quickly leading to potential effective treatments for celiac disease.”

For more information on the Celiac Research Foundation click here. To donation to the foundation, click here.

Beyond Celiac has awarded close to $450,000 to two scientists conducting groundbreaking celiac disease studies. One study is aimed at killer cells that cause the actual intestinal tissue damage in celiac disease and the other is researching a more exact way to measure intestinal damage revealed in a biopsy.

In addition, Beyond Celiac awarded an Early Career grant of $150,000 earlier this year, bringing the total invested in research to nearly $600,000 in 2019. Overall, Beyond Celiac gave top priority in awarding these two newest 2019 grants to research investigating the role of T-cells in driving the immune response in celiac disease. White blood cells that function as the body’s disease-fighting soldiers, T-Cells are improperly activated by gluten in those who have celiac disease.

“The scientific world is looking at celiac disease as part of the broader autoimmune disease spectrum, and progress is being made as a result. At Beyond Celiac, we remain committed to our mission of advancing research with an international scope and supporting scientists who study immunological diseases,” said Alice Bast, CEO of Beyond Celiac.

The grant winters include a professor at the University of Oxford, England and the director of research at the Celiac Disease Program at Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts.

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Paul Klenerman, PhD, a professor of gastroenterology and an immunologist who has done extensive work in Hepatitis C and HIV, has received the Established Investigator Award, a grant of up to $100,000 for each of three years. The award places emphasis on immunology and is designed to support novel approaches to understanding celiac disease. It also encourages scientists working in another related field, like Klenerman, to turn their attention to celiac disease.

Klenerman’s research will focus on T-cells in the inner gut lining – killer CD8 T-cells. Currently, it’s known that a particular type of CD8 T-cell is abundant in the gut of celiac disease patients even when they are on the gluten-free diet. 

“These cells have features which suggest they are responding to a particular, unknown signal, and acting to cause inflammation, potentially driving celiac disease,” Klenerman explained. “We do not yet fully know what activates them, how they cause damage and how they can be regulated.” 

For more on celiac research, click here. 

His work will attempt to answer these questions and look more closely at a new cell type that is driving inflammation and tissue damage in celiac disease. Klenerman plans to explore the cells’ role in celiac disease and what triggers them, which may directly lead to improved tests and treatments. 

The Pilot and Feasibility Award, which is given to help scientists collect the preliminary data needed to begin answering major questions about celiac disease, has been awarded to Jocelyn Silvester, MD, director of research at the Celiac Disease Program at Children’s Hospital, Boston. Silvester will receive a grant of up to $80,000 for each of two years.

Preliminary data show that transcriptomics – the study of all ribonucleic acid molecules within a cell – of intestinal biopsies can identify genes that correlate to inflammation caused by gluten. This type of early phase of study could lead to breakthroughs for larger scale research or clinical trials.

“When Beyond Celiac formed its Scientific Advisory Council earlier this year, one goal was to give vigorous review to the grant applications we receive,” said Marie Robert, MD, chief scientific officer of Beyond Celiac and the only CSO of a celiac disease patient advocacy group in the United States. “We achieved that goal through the selection of top notch research by top notch scientists.”

Beyond Celiac is a leading research-driven celiac disease organization working to drive diagnosis, advance research and accelerate the discovery of new treatments and a cure. For more on the group, see here.  

New research has shed light on the benefits, both for longevity and fighting disease, of intermittent fasting.

In a study published in Cell, Mount Sinai researchers found that fasting reduces inflammation and improves chronic inflammatory diseases such as celiac disease without affecting the immune system’s response to acute infections.

While acute inflammation is a normal immune process that helps fight off infections, chronic inflammation can have serious consequences for health, including heart disease, celiac disease, diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and inflammatory bowel diseases. 

“Caloric restriction is known to improve inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, but the mechanisms by which reduced caloric intake controls inflammation have been poorly understood,” said senior author Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Working with human and mouse immune cells, Dr. Merad and colleagues showed that intermittent fasting reduced the release of pro-inflammatory cells called “monocytes” in blood circulation. Further investigations revealed that during periods of fasting, these cells go into “sleep mode” and are less inflammatory than monocytes found in those who were fed.

“Monocytes are highly inflammatory immune cells that can cause serious tissue damage, and the population has seen an increasing amount in their blood circulation as a result of eating habits that humans have acquired in recent centuries,” said Dr. Merad. 

“Considering the broad spectrum of diseases that are caused by chronic inflammation and the increasing number of patients affected by these diseases, there is an enormous potential in investigating the anti-inflammatory effects of fasting,” said first author Stefan Jordan, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Oncological Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

Researchers plan to continue trying to decipher the molecular mechanisms by which fasting improves inflammatory diseases, which could lead to novel preventive therapeutic strategies for the treatment of many human diseases. 

Beyond Celiac  has launched a first-of-its-kind mobile app to complement its online research database, Go Beyond Celiac.

Go Beyond Celiac is an online database created by people with celiac disease, for people with celiac disease. Thousands of people have enrolled since it launched in 2017. Users can participate in research by sharing their stories and experiences and become involved in celiac disease research studies.

The new app now makes Go Beyond Celiac more interactive and engaging, and the mobile convenience should encourage more people to visit and share their experience of living with and managing celiac disease. This is done through surveys that can be filled out at users’ convenience. The app also offers information about events, educational opportunities and more. Go Beyond Celiac members will be able to see how they compare to others as a more complete picture of celiac disease emerges from the data collected.

For more on top gluten-free mobile apps, click here. 

“Understanding how people have been impacted by celiac disease is some of the most important information researchers and doctors need in order to accelerate celiac disease research,” said Alice Bast, CEO of Beyond Celiac. “Go Beyond Celiac provides us with the ability to tell them what life is like before, during and after our diagnosis.”

In addition to driving research that leads to a better understanding of how celiac disease develops, the Go Beyond Celiac online tool provides opportunities to increase timely diagnosis and improve the diagnosis experience, inform research about the burden of living with celiac disease, accelerate the development of treatment alternatives to the gluten-free diet and ultimately help find a cure.

“While awareness of celiac disease is higher than ever, people living with this genetic autoimmune condition struggle to be taken seriously. At Beyond Celiac, we are working to address this need. We are a bridge between the community and the researchers who are focused on finding answers to our challenges,” said Bast.

The Go Beyond Celiac app is available for both iOS and Android devices.

Beyond Celiac is a leading celiac disease organization working to drive diagnosis, advance research and accelerate the discovery of new treatments and a cure. For more information on Beyond Celiac, click here.