Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a group of chronic inflammatory conditions of the intestine, with Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) being the principal types. The incidence of IBD has rapidly increased in recent decades, with an estimated 5 million people living with IBD globally. While CD can affect the whole intestinal tract often in a patchy pattern, inflammation is more uniformly distributed and restricted to the colon and rectum in UC. Nevertheless, CD and UC greatly overlap in their clinical symptoms and complex etiology and pathogenesis. To date, over 200 genetic variants have been associated with disease onset, and the role of environmental triggers, e.g. diet and gut microbiota composition, has been progressively acknowledged as a critical factor in regulating local inflammatory responses.

IBD is a relapsing-remitting disorder. All currently available treatments aim at reducing the symptoms of acute inflammation to keep the patient in a remission state, and include immunosuppressive agents such as corticosteroids, azathioprine, methotrexate and 5-aminoacylic acid as well as monoclonal antibodies blocking TNF and T cell recruitment to the gut mucosa. Given the disease is highly complex and heterogeneous there is an urgent need for biomarkers and personalized therapies targeting novel mechanisms of action.