New Research by Dr. Eva Helmerhorst Highlights Saliva’s Ability to Breakdown Dietary Gluten
Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine (GSDM) Associate Professor of Periodontology & Oral Biology Dr. Eva Helmerhorst received a R01 award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on June 1. Her research, titled “Gastro-intestinal Microbes Degrading Dietary Gluten,” is funded for five years at just over $2 million total.
The research is related to the novel role of saliva in the digestion of food. Dr. Helmerhorst and her team have discovered oral proteases with unique specificities so far not identified in mammalian digestive enzyme systems. The discovery of bacterial proteolytic enzymes capable of degrading dietary proteins provides new insight into the capacity of the oral environment to impact food digestion.
Dr. Helmerhorst’s findings show that human saliva contains enzymes that specifically target dietary gluten for breakdown. The gluten family of proteins cause serious health hazards, including celiac disease, in certain genetically predisposed individuals. Celiac disease is a digestive disease that damages the small intestines and interferes with absorption of nutrients from food. People with celiac disease have difficulty tolerating gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye, and barley. According to research published by the The National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse (NDDIC), more than 2 million people in the United States, about 1 in 133 people, have celiac disease.
“The discovery of enzymes with gluten-degrading capacity in the oral cavity may open new diagnostic and treatment avenues for patients afflicted with celiac disease,” said Dr. Helmerhorst.
Dr. Helmerhorst will collaborate on this research with Dr. Floyd Dewhirst, senior member of the staff at Forsyth Institute. Functional studies pertaining to gluten neutralization in vivo will be carried out in collaboration with Professor of Medicine Dr. Detlef Schuppan of the Division of Gastroenterology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Additional key personnel include co-investigators Drs. Guoxian Wei and Erdjan Salih in the GSDM Department of Periodontology and Oral Biology, and consultants Drs. William Cruikshank, Frits Koning, and GSDM Professor & Chair of Periodontology & Oral Biology Dr. Frank Oppenheim.
Dr. Helmerhorst added, “The ultimate goal is to develop novel and clinically effective strategies to detoxify immunogenic gluten using therapeutic applications including enzymatic and probiotic approaches.”