<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

My father-in-law sent me an article titled "Peptide discovery gets to the
guts of coeliac disease" which appeared in the July 2000 issue of
"Chemistry In Britain". I will summarize the article, below:

The article states that Oxford physicians and scientists did an experiment
in which celiac patients who were previously on a gluten-free diet were fed
a series of human-made peptides that are copies of portions of the peptide
chains that are found in the gliadin portion of wheat. The hope was that by
feeding those in the study overlapping partial chains, and then testing
their blood for T-cells afterward, they could find which specific portion
of the wheat protein set off the immune reaction in celiacs.

One single peptide did trigger the reaction. Now that it has been
identified, it is hoped that some solutions to the problems caused by
celiac disease may become available. Two approaches seem to involve
"turning off" the reaction -- it's thought that offering a megadose of the
particular peptide might turn the immune reaction off. Another method would
involve offering a peptide that was very similar to the offending piece of
wheat protein -- but just enough different that it might "turn off" the
reaction.

Another possibility is, of course, genetically modified wheat. It should be
possible for scientists to develop a wheat that has a different peptide in
the place of the offender, which would hopefully look, taste, and act as
wheat does in normal baking without triggering celiac reactions.
--
Linda Blanchard
http://www.nowheat.com/grfx/nowheat/
GF foods database, CD primer, and cookbook
Midland, TX, USA