The Allen Institute for Immunology, a division of the Seattle-based Allen Institute, is teaming with Seattle Children’s Research Institute to launch a study aimed at understanding the origins of inflammatory bowel disorder (IBD), the organizations announced Monday.
The new initiative, called the Seattle Spatial Transcriptomic Research in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Evaluation (STRIDE) study, will be a first-of-its-kind pediatric study. Researchers will use state-of-the-art technology to understand how genes and other molecules behave in individual cells of patients who haven’t been treated yet.
IBD — which includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis — affects 3 million people in the United States and 30% of all IBD diagnoses are in patients 20 years and younger. Seattle Children’s said the incidence of IBD is around 10.9 per 100,000 children and growing over recent years.
There is currently no curative therapy for pediatric IBD, which Children’s called more challenging to treat than adult IBD and more extensive and aggressive.
“We’re excited to launch this first-of-its-kind study that will provide the truest understanding of the intestinal immune system using the most thorough and unbiased techniques to date,” Dr. Hengqi (Betty) Zheng, principal investigator for the trial at Seattle Children’s, said in a statement.
The new collaboration aims to eventually cure IBD and provide targeted and curative therapy to children who suffer from IBD.
