BREAKTHROUGH TREATMENT FOUND FOR BOWEL DISEASE.

Byline: Jane E. Allen Associated Press

Researchers reported Wednesday that they've induced remission of a severe inflammatory bowel condition called Crohn's disease using a novel therapy that blocks a crucial protein.

``This is a real breakthrough in treatment,'' said Dr. Stephan Targan, director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. ``These are people who don't respond to anything; people who have to be on steroids for years, which has a lot of side effects.''

Targan led a team that included researchers at hospitals in the United States, Belgium and the Netherlands.

He reported the findings at the Digestive Disease Week conference in San Francisco, a joint meeting of four major gastrointestinal and liver disease associations.

Study subjects received single intravenous doses of a monoclonal antibody called cA2, which blocks tumor necrosis factor, a blood protein that plays a role in the inflammation.

Monoclonal antibodies are cells engineered to sweep through the blood and latch onto a target protein, in this case TNF. The cA2 is a ``humanized'' antibody - the portion that attaches to TNF comes from a mouse, while the rest comes from a person.

Although researchers ``don't know the precise mechanism'' of how the monoclonal antibody acts on TNF, it appears to inhibit the function of certain immune cells inside the inflamed intestinal lining, Targan said in an interview Tuesday.

The placebo-controlled, random double-blind study involved 108 patients. Of those who received some dose of the drug, 65 percent showed significant improvement after four weeks, compared with just 17 percent of those who received a dummy injection. Of the 65 percent who responded, half went into remission, while the rest showed dramatic improvement, Targan said.

Benefits appeared as early as two weeks after treatment and persisted through at least 12 weeks.