Inflammatory Bowel Disease Research
The focus of the multi-center research program which I lead is to discover underlying mechanisms and better therapeutic approaches in the broad area of chronic inflammation, growth, and mucosal healing as it relates to adult and pediatric patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD).
A particular emphasis currently is to define mechanisms which link
neutralizing GM-CSF auto-antibodies which we have discovered to
neutrophil dysfunction and more severe small bowel Crohn’s Disease (CD),
using both murine and patient-based approaches, and to develop new
diagnostic biomarkers based upon this observation.
My second focus
area is utilizing next generation sequencing (NGS) approaches to define
the intestinal microbial community and host global pattern of gene
expression relative to clinical outcomes in large prospective pediatric
IBD inception cohorts. These studies will identify mechanisms of
disease which affect both growth and mucosal inflammation in patients
with IBD, and will guide the development of new diagnostics and
therapeutics.