Some people with ITP are also infected with Helicobacter pylori, the same bacteria that cause most peptic ulcers.
The evidence that ulcers are triggered by a bug called Helicobacter pylori had been accumulating since the 1970s.
The full genome of Helicobacter is known, but the jobs of most of the proteins that it produces are ill-defined.
About a third of this group carry the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, which makes stomach bleeds three times more likely - and antibiotics eradicate it.
In demonstrating its approach, the company has chosen to work with a simpler organism than man, namely Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes stomach ulcers.
Helicobacter's activities seem, so far, to be confined to the stomach (though the bacterium has now been implicated in cancer there, as well as in its ulcers).
Many scientists believe garlic helps prevent stomach cancer because it has anti-bacterial effects against a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, found in the stomach and known to promote cancer there.
The system could, for example, be used to explore the binding between Helicobacter proteins and those in the stomach cells that it attacks, in order to find targets for new drugs to block ulceration.
According to Donny Strosberg, the head of Hybrigenics, the team has worked out about half of the protein interactions that happen in Helicobacter, but he is content to leave it at that in order to pursue bigger fish.
Gut bacteria were found to have a surprising role in disease 20 years ago, when Australian scientists showed that stomach ulcers aren't caused by stress, as long thought, but by chronic infection with the stomach bacterium Helicobacter pylori.
Two common gut bacteria, Escherichia coli and Helicobacter pylori, and also the influenza-A virus, are particularly adept at playing the evasive game of molecular mimicry, and the team is now looking at possible connections between different gut bacteria and autoantibodies against melanocortins to see if they can pin down which, if any, of these bugs might be responsible.
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