Innovative Public-Private Consortium Established to Define the Triggers of IBD | Nestlé Health Science

Academic and Industry Teams Converge to Focus on Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Advance Innovative Interception and Prevention Strategies

Spring House, Pa. May 5, 2014 – Janssen Research & Development, LLC (Janssen) announced today the establishment of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC), Prometheus Laboratories Inc. (Prometheus), Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota (Mayo Clinic), Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire (CHRU) de Lille, France (Lille) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (Mount Sinai).  The consortium’s goal is to identify the biological triggers that cause or lead to the development of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).  This first-of-its-kind Pre-IBD Consortium brings together leading academic and industry experts to identify disease interception and prevention strategies for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis (UC).

“The consortium has been designed as a partnership of equals to leverage the distinct skills brought by each member, and is a model of academic-industry collaboration where intellectual property is shared for the ultimate benefit of patients and advancing science,” said Francisco Leon, M.D., Ph.D., Head, Immunology Translational Medicine, Janssen.  “NMRC provides overall coordination and microbiology expertise; Janssen brings systems pharmacology and proteomic biomarker capabilities, as well as translational informatics and knowledge management through information technology; Prometheus contributes its unique antibody and serum biomarker expertise; Mount Sinai’s world-class computational capabilities allow for integration and mining of big data; and Lille and Mayo Clinic experts will lead the interpretation of the data.”

The public-private Pre-IBD Consortium has been created to combine unbiased high-throughput technology and deep disease understanding to mine the vast resources of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) serum repository.  “The DoD serum repository, with its sheer sample size and longitudinal sample collection from health to disease onset and beyond, is a unique resource to understand the natural history of Crohn’s disease and UC,” said Joseph A. Murray, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Consultant in Gastroenterology and Immunology, Mayo Clinic.

The DoD database and serum repository allow the exploration of clinical and epidemiological factors surrounding the link between acute enteric infections associated with military deployment and chronic disease.  A goal is to understand the potential infectious triggers of IBD, which would support vaccine development efforts against the most common causes of acute gastroenteritis and infectious diarrhea, in addition to potentially preventing IBD.

The CRADA leverages an existing collaboration between Janssen and Mount Sinai under the coordination of Jean-Frédéric Colombel, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Gastroenterology, at the Icahn School of Medicine and Director of The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at The Mount Sinai Hospital, who initiated the collaboration while at Lille and now continues to lead it at Mount Sinai. 
As many as 1.4 million people in the United States and more than five million people worldwide are affected by IBD—chronic, immune-mediated digestive diseases that include Crohn’s disease and UC.¹  The prevalence of these inflammatory diseases continues to rise, especially in children,² and many individuals may progress to a point where surgical intervention is needed.³  Although progress has been made in research and treatment over the years, researchers do not know what causes IBD.¹

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