Research into gluten sensitivity has never been more popular nor more
exciting. Thus a call for a new book, Celiac Disease: Methods and
Protocols, devoted entirely to techniques and technology seemed a most
appropriate undertaking. I am therefore grateful to Professor J. M.
Walker for inviting me to complete this task for Humana Press. To do
this would have been imp- sible without the contributions of friends and
colleagues from around the world who have devoted so much interest to
the project. It has also been necessary for them to master the unique
chapter-writing skills required of every ma- script published in this
series of laboratory monographs. With regard to gluten sensitivity we
are in a period of great change, occasioned by the introduction of
reproducible methods for cloning lymp- cytes, the application of
physical methods to identify gluten sequences as T-cell antigens, the
study of peptide responses in vitro and in vivo by either jejunal or
rectal challenge, elucidating the locations of other genes concerned in
pathogenesis, or the use of elegant immunohistocytochemical and mRNA
probing techniques for analyzing the finer points of the mucosal inflam-
tory response to gluten.