Celiac Drug Fast-Tracked by FDA

I have Google alerts set up for celiac disease, and the other day I was checking out an interesting press release: Alba Therapeutics Presents New Data for Larazotide Acetate at the 2008 American College of Gastroenterology Annual Scientific Meeting.

Now, if you have celiac disease you may have heard about Alba Therapeutics. They've been sponsoring clinical trials of a drug to treat the symptoms of celiac disease. Now, I'm a computer geek and not a doctor, but I thought the following exerpts were extremely promising:

• "...The first Phase IIa trial conducted in celiac disease... showed that larazotide acetate (AT-1001) successfully demonstrated prevention of gluten-induced immunologic changes in celiac patients."
• "Larazotide acetate has the potential to become the first approved medicine to treat celiac disease and has been granted "Fast Track" designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for this indication."
• "This study showed that larazotide acetate prevented immunologic changes induced by gluten in patients with celiac disease."

The full paper is available via Wiley. I look forward to hearing more about the AT-1001 drug!