The number of new people being diagnosed with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, collectively known as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), is rising each year. Symptoms can be very different from one person to the next - some people will have inflammation which gets worse over time whereas in others the inflammation is easily treated.
Unfortunately, we don’t know why Crohn’s and colitis starts or what controls this behaviour over time. The aims of Open-IBD are to identify molecular, cellular, bacterial and viral biomarkers of long-term health outcomes in IBD and identify causal factors driving IBD pathology. To do this we will recruit up to 2,000 research participants from patients who may be diagnosed with IBD.
Patients with suspected IBD will be consented to the study and blood, stool and tissue samples will be collected along with medical history and symptom data. Blood and tissue samples collected at the participating hospital sites will be sent to Sanger for storage and processing. The Wellcome Sanger Institute will generate single cell gene expression data and participant whole genome sequencing to understand patient variants contributing to disease and response to treatment.
Stool samples will be collected by patients at home and sent to Newcastle University. Newcastle will conduct faecal calprotectin assays as a measure of disease activity and response to treatment. Newcastle will conduct analysis of the participant gut microbiome (including bacteria and viruses, fungi and archaea) and metabolome analysis to identify markers of disease and response.
To find out more information about the study, please watch the short video below.
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