Testing new medicines for Crohn’s disease using blood cells from volunteers with Crohn's disease

Summary

Crohn’s disease is a chronic condition that affects many people around the world. The disease causes inflammation in the gut, resulting in symptoms including diarrhoea, stomach aches and weight loss.
Current treatments include medicines such as steroid tablets which reduce the inflammation. Sometimes major surgery is required to remove small sections of the affected gut. This is often a temporary fix, as the disease can reappear a few years after surgery. Whilst the current approaches can help manage the disease, better medicines are needed that can prevent Crohn's disease from recurring.
Approximately one third of patients with Crohn’s disease are known to have inherited a defective form of a gene called NOD2. This change produces a defective protein, which results in the overstimulation of the immune system to natural gut bacteria. This overstimulation leads to the immune system attacking the gut, causing the symptoms associated with Crohn’s disease.
In this study, the BioResource will be used to find volunteers with Crohn’s disease both with and without the defective NOD2 gene. A small amount of blood will be taken from these volunteers and processed to separate out specialised white blood cells that make up our immune system. These cells will be exposed to several potential new medicines that target the defective NOD2 protein. How these cells respond to these new treatments will be measured and the data will be analysed to identify the most effective ones for further clinical development. This study is a significant first step on the road to developing a new medicine to treat patients with Crohn’s disease.