GUIDE-IBD

Molecular-medicine based therapy GUIDancE in Inflammatory Bowel Disease

The joint project GUIDE-IBD engages in optimizing the therapy of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). This term refers to recurring or permanent inflammatory conditions of the bowel that usually occur in episodes. The two main manifestations of IBD are Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis and particularly affect younger patients. Until now, the exact causes and origins of disease remain uncertain. At the current state of science, IBD is considered as an autoimmune disorder, in which genetic factors can play a role. At the present state, IBD cannot be completely cured. Even the most modern therapeutic approaches only lead to a temporary regression of symptoms in every second patient.
This is where GUIDE-IBD comes in: Within the scope of the project, an optimized therapy guidance should be tested under real life conditions in the clinic.
The focus is on a study on a small collective with 130 patients. 65 patients are each to receive either the best standard therapy currently available or an optimized individual treatment. Subsequently the therapeutic success of both approaches should be compared at precisely defined end points. Within the study, the treating clinicians were not given any treatment decisions. All medical decisions are discussed and determined by the clinicians within the framework of a molecular therapy conference. In contrast to the conventional standard therapy, the optimized therapy provides additional information, for example in the form of various molecular disease parameters, with the help of which an individual therapy decision can be made. Thus, the possibilities of an individual therapy guidance should be improved and treatment success should be increased. In a successful case, it is planned to transfer the therapy guidance into clinical routine.