During the Q&A session of a June, 1999, Informed Investors Forum presentation, the CEO of Repligen gave the following speculation about Secretin's mechanism of action:
"Secretin is a gut hormone, and most autistics have overt digestive problems. We think that what is happening in these individuals is that one of the underlying causes is that their guts cannot process food, like proteins from milk and wheat--similar to Siliac's disease, which is a disease of the gut's response to wheat. In the absence of Secretin, which keeps the Ph balance in the intestine, you have the acid of the stomach coming into the intestine and it is not neutralized; the intestine becomes acidified; it damages the epithelial lining, which becomes leaky, and things that are in the intestine and that normally would not go across through to the blood, like undigested peptides, go across to the blood. It is well documented by the people at J&J, actually, who are developing a diagnostic test for exactly that process to detect in the urine of people, who are two years old, where you can tell they are autistic if they have these peptides in their urine. Urine and blood are kinda the same--if it is their blood, it is going to be in their urine. Many of these peptides have very potent biological activities. One of them, for example, I heard a guy from J&J talk two weeks ago--in his hands, at J&J's hands, the peptide is 100 times more potent than morphine on the morphine receptor [of the brain]. So our hypothesis is that the autism is secondary to the ability of these peptides, that come through the gut, not be digested, go to the brain, and affect behavior and speech in a paralyzing sort of way."
Marc |
