An estimated 3.3-million people in the United States have celiac disease, a potentially life-threatening autoimmune disease where gluten, a protein in wheat, barley, and rye, causes damage to the small intestine. It’s different and more severe than gluten sensitivity, and it’s not just an allergy. Those with celiac disease cannot process gluten; they can have digestive issues, trouble absorbing the necessary nutrients their bodies need, and potentially lasting damage to their small intestine which can make those absorption issues chronic and lead to cancer.
Research published in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology in December confirmed the understanding that people with celiac disease are more likely to develop lymphoma and small bowel cancer, and also found people with the disease have increased risks of pancreatic, esophageal, gastric, and colonic cancers.
Currently, there’s no treatment for celiac disease aside from avoiding gluten. In situations where someone becomes really dehydrated, the only treatment is giving replacement fluids through an IV. Now, new research is using messenger RNA (mRNA) led by Penn Medicine’s Drew Weissman, the Roberts Family Professor of Vaccine Research and Jilian Melamed, research assistant professor of infectious diseases.
So far, mRNA has offered a new way to prevent viruses, specifically the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, thanks to a novel vaccine platform from Weissman and his longtime scientific collaborator at Penn, Katalin Karikó, an adjunct professor of neurosurgery. Their discovery earned the pair a Nobel Prize. At Penn and elsewhere, researchers are revamping mRNA to create vaccines for a variety of infectious diseases like norovirus, C. diff, herpes simplex virus 2, and HIV, and trials are underway to put mRNA gene therapy to the test. Researchers like Weissman and Michael J. Mitchell, an associate professor of bioengineering at Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, are even exploring mRNA as a cancer stopper, spurring the body’s immune system to mount robust defenses against cells that are inherently skilled at protecting themselves from humans’ natural defenses.
When it comes to treating celiac disease, the need is different. “In a way, we want to use mRNA to induce the opposite response you’d want for an infectious disease vaccine,” says Melamed. “For diseases like COVID, you want to induce an infection-fighting response; for celiac disease, we want to stop the immune response already happening in the body.”
The idea is to make what experts call a “tolerizing vaccine,” or a vaccine that would allow someone’s body to tolerate the thing it’s reacting to; in this case, that would be the gluten protein.
Read more at Penn Medicine News.
