Feb 21, 2008 - Alvine Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on the treatment of autoimmune and gastrointestinal diseases, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued two key patents, 7,320,788 and 7,303,871, covering gluten detoxification with proline specific prolyl endopeptidases (PEPs) and with mixtures of a PEP and a glutamine specific protease. Alvine has an exclusive worldwide license to these patents under an agreement with Stanford University. Both patents provide important protection for ALV003, Alvine's lead product currently in clinical development for use in the treatment of celiac disease.
"Alvine is delighted that these two patents have issued," said Dr. Abhay Joshi, Alvine's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Alvine and others have shown PEPs to be efficient at degrading gluten. With these patents and our recently announced initiation of clinical trials of ALV003 (a combination of a PEP and a glutamine specific protease), we believe Alvine is well positioned to capitalize on the potential use of proteases as therapeutic agents to treat celiac disease. ALV003 is more efficient at degrading gluten than either a PEP or a glutamine specific protease alone."
About ALV003
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.
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