Towards precision medicine in patients with inflammatory bowel disease; Translational studies of the intestinal microenvironment and host immunity

There is an urgent need to develop biomarkers predicting disease course and therapy outcome in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

Also, clinically accessible tools to guide clinicians how to identify and choose the best treatment option for the individual patient are highly warranted.The hypothesis is that the interaction between the host and the intestinal microenvironment, comprising microbiota and the metabolites they produce, impacts the immune profile, disease course and therapy response of patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

The aim is to test: The clinical response to biological therapies can be predicted by the immune profileThe fecal metabolome and microbiota signatures are potent diagnostic markersThe fecal metabolome and microbiota imprints properties of adaptive immunity This project will ensure that improved understanding of disease pathology will form the basis for identifying biomarkers for precision medicine, enabling individualized treatment.

Expected project outcomes include (i) prediction of individual patient’s disease course and therapy response (ii) identification of biomarkers to diagnose patients irrespective of disease stage (iii) advanced mechanistic understanding on how gut microbiota govern host immunity during the course of disease.

To achieve the goals of this translational project, we make use of patient cohorts, mostly already at hand, and cell culture model systems developed and established in-house.