Celiac.com 06/22/2015 - Currently available digestive enzymes do not fully degrade gluten, and are thus of questionable use for people with celiac disease or gluten intolerance, say a team of researchers. Prior research had shown that post-proline cutting enzyme effectively degrade the immunogenic gluten peptides. Several existing digestive enzyme supplements claim to promote gluten degradation.
The research team set out to assess the degradation of immunogenic gluten epitopes by currently available digestive enzymes. The team included G. Janssen, C. Christis, Y. Kooy-Winkelaar, L. Edens, D. Smith, P. van Veelen, and F. Koning. They are variously affiliated with the Department of Immunohematology and Blood Transfusion, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands, DSM...

Celiac.com 10/23/2015 - Just as I finished writing about the failure of current commercial enzymes to effectively degrade gluten, an interesting study on another enzyme suggests that there may be help on the horizon, at least for people without celiac disease.
According to the latest press release, in lab conditions, aspergillus niger prolyl endoprotease (AN-PEP) efficiently degrades gluten molecules into non-immunogenic peptides. But so what?
If AN-PEP is to be effective in people with celiac disease or gluten-sensitivity, which would seem to be the whole point of an anti-gluten enzyme, it must effectively digest gluten in "non-healthy" subjects.
A team of researchers recently set out to assess AN-PEP on gluten degradation in a low and high calorie meal in healthy...

Celiac.com 06/26/2017 - Designed to reduce or eliminate symptoms of gluten contamination in gluten-sensitive individuals, the product known as AN-PEP, marketed in the U.S. as Tolerase G, is a prolyl endoprotease enzyme, derived from Aspergillus niger, that has shown promise in breaking down gluten proteins.
The latest news comes in the form of a small study that shows the enzyme to be effective in the stomach itself, where harshly acidic conditions render many enzymes ineffective.
Speaking to an audience at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2017, lead investigator Julia König, PhD, of Sweden's Örebro University, said that the enzyme was special, because…[t]here are a lot of enzymes on the market, but this functions in the stomach where the pH is acidic. Often enzymes don't work in thi...

Celiac.com 09/24/2018 - A team of researchers recently set out to investigate the degradation of gluten in rye sourdough products by means of a proline-specific peptidase.
The research team included Theresa Walter, Herbert Wieser, and Peter Koehler, with the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Lebensmittelchemie, Leibniz Institut in Freising, Germany.
Their team monitored gluten content of rye sourdough during fermentation using competitive ELISA based on the R5 antibody. The team noted a decrease in gluten over time, but found that even prolonged fermentation did not bring gluten levels below 20 ppm requirement for gluten-free foods. 
Interestingly, they did find that Aspergillus niger prolyl endopeptidase (AN-PEP) extensively degraded gluten concentrations of up to 8...