Year 5

The goal of this award was to test regenerative medicine approaches using human embryonic and adult stem cells in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In IBD, the regeneration of damaged intestinal tissue is necessary for preventing complicated disease and for maintaining adequate nutrition. We sought to target the epithelial components of the disease and explore the potential of using hESCs as a cell-based therapy for IBD. We have learned a great deal about the mechanisms that regulate intestinal stem cells as well as about how hESCs produce differentiated intestinal tissue in vitro, and these data will be foundational to future approaches to treat IBD.