VG Life Sciences (VGLS), a biotechnology company committed to developing therapies for infectious and autoimmune diseases, recently announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued the company a Patent No. 8906846 covering a new method to treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) via administrating a CLIP-inducing agent.

This patent, along with the company’s already-established intellectual properties, demonstrates VG Life Science’s continued efforts to advance the potential of CLIP (class II-associated invariant chain peptide) as a groundbreaking solution to chronic inflammatory conditions.

The company’s research projects are based on the concept that when an endothelial or epithelial cell of the mucosal tract is lacking its own CLIP, the cell will be vulnerable to mediated cell death, which consequently causes autoimmune diseases such as IBD.

The company’s new therapeutic technology utilizes findings revealing that CLIP provides a kind of armor to the cell’s surface, which shields it from mediated cell death. Agents that promote CLIP — exogenous CLIP included — have been proven very useful in the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as Ulcerative Colitis.

“This patent fortifies our growing intellectual property portfolio in the field of autoimmune diseases and further validates the company’s expertise in elucidating the complicated yet important part that CLIP plays in many chronic inflammatory and autoimmune conditions. Current therapies for IBD treat the symptoms but don’t address the underlying immune response. As one of the more than 1.3 million people in the U.S. who have suffered with IBD, I’m very excited by the potential of the company’s research to address this unmet need,” said David Odell, VG Life Sciences’ CFO, in a press release.

In other developments in IBD, a study on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) entitled “Complex host genetics influence the microbiome in inflammatory bowel disease,” published in the journal Genome Medicine, found that patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) can inherit the ‘gut’ bacteria that has been observed to drive the disease.

“The intestinal bacteria, or ‘gut microbiome,’ you develop at a very young age, can have a big impact on your health for the rest of your life,” said lead author Dr. Dan Knights. “We have found groups of genes that may play a role in shaping the development of imbalanced gut microbes.”