Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a chronic inflammatory disease with limited treatment options. The two main forms of the disease, Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative Colitis, affect more than 300,000 people in the UK. Up to 40% of patients with IBD fail to respond to conventional therapies, partly due to our limited understanding of the cells that form the large intestine, but also how they change in in patients affected by this disease.
A new study by the group of Professor Alison Simmons at the MRC Human Immunology Unit based in the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine paves the way for better treatments for IBD by providing the first detailed single cell resolution analysis of colon cells in health and disease.