Accelerating Drug Development For Inflammatory Bowel Disease With Organ-Chips

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a critical area of unmet medical need affecting roughly 10 million people worldwide, with approximately 50% of patients not responding to existing therapies and around 90% unable to achieve long-term remission. The poor performance of current IBD treatments is partly attributed to the lack of human relevance in traditional preclinical models. These models, which only allow the examination of one aspect of IBD at a time, do not accurately reflect the drug's interaction within the complex environment of the intestines, leading to a high rate of clinical trial failures. There's a growing consensus on the necessity for a more human-centric approach in IBD drug discovery and development.

During this webinar, Marianne Kanellias highlighted the potential of Emulate Organ-on-a-Chip technology to offer a more comprehensive and representative model of IBD. This technology, particularly the Emulate human Colon Intestine-Chip, enables the simulation of the inflammatory response characteristic of IBD, including immune cell attachment, migration, effector function, and the resulting barrier damage. This approach allows for the evaluation of anti-inflammatory drugs in a model that more closely mirrors human IBD.

Joined by Chris Carman, Ph.D., who spearheaded the development of the immune cell recruitment application for the Colon Intestine-Chip, the presenters also addressed common challenges in modeling inflammatory diseases, showcased the capability of the Colon Intestine-Chip to mimic gut-specific immune cell recruitment, and discussed the assessment of IBD therapeutics' efficacy with diverse mechanisms of action.

Access additional insights and a live Q&A session by watching the recording below.