Alvine Pharmaceuticals is developing innovative therapeutic and diagnostic products for the treatment of celiac disease, a gluten-induced autoimmune disease for which no drug therapy is presently available.   Founded in 2005, and based on technology created at Stanford and the Celiac Sprue Research Foundation, Alvine Pharmaceuticals plans to become the leader in developing new drugs to treat celiac disease and other immune related diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. Alvine’s primary goal is to translate new knowledge about immune system pathogenesis into innovative therapeutic products. New discoveries form basis for Alvine’s therapies Recent investigations have led to several important discoveries about celiac disease that provide targets for drug development (see Bibliography). Among common dietary proteins, gluten is especially difficult to digest due to the abundance of the amino acids proline and glutamine. Because proteases in the human stomach and small intestine are unable to cleave proteins at either of these amino acids efficiently, toxic gluten peptides traverse a considerable distance into the small intestine. These peptides are modified (deamidated) by another human protein, tissue transglutaminase 2, and can trigger an inflammatory response in patients with celiac disease. More about celiac disease   Alvine’s lead clinical product candidate ALV003 is an orally administered combination of two proteases engineered to digest gluten. It targets the glutamine and proline residues that are common in gluten. ALV003 consists of a glutamine-specific cysteine protease (EP-B2) and a proline-specific prolyl endopeptidase (PEP). The proposed mechanism of action of ALV003 is to digest gluten into non-immunotoxic fragments.