Drugs breakthrough for bowel disease
The team at UCD’s Conway Institute has discovered a potential drug treatment for inflammatory bowel disease, a cure that usually requires surgery.
The condition affects about 15,000 Irish people and millions worldwide. It can limit quality of life for many patients and increases the risk of colorectal cancer.
With the disease, the digestive system is impaired and the gut becomes inflamed and swollen.
In a discovery, published in the scientific journal Gastroenterology, the scientists demonstrated they can almost completely reverse the symptoms of the disease using a new class of drugs known as hydroxylase inhibitors.
“Under normal conditions our gastrointestinal tract is lined with cells that block the contents of the gut from leaking into the intestine. “However, when a person is suffering from inflammatory bowel disease, this barrier is broken and the contents of the gut leak out into surrounding areas,” said one of the lead researchers Prof Cormac Taylor of UCD.
“When we applied the new drugs, the gut was tricked into thinking that it was being deprived of oxygen. This activated the protective pathways which in turn prevented the death of cells that line the gastrointestinal tract.”
While completing their investigation, the Irish scientists discovered a similar study was being carried out in the University of Colorado, which supports their findings.
The Irish and US researchers will now begin a joint research project to bring their discoveries to the next stage of developing a drug that will be safe for humans.
“By working in collaboration with a Dublin-based drug delivery company, we intend to focus on developing methods to safely deliver these drugs to their intended target in the inflamed gut,” explained Prof Taylor.
