Takeda partners with two universities to study inflammatory bowel disease

DEERFIELD - Takeda Pharmaceuticals U.S.A. announced a multiyear research partnership with two global academic centers with a proven long-term commitment to inflammatory bowel disease research and care.

The partnership with the University of Chicago and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, will help to further patient care through the increased study of IBD. Takeda aims to pave the way for translating science into pioneering treatment paradigms and patient-centered support, with initiatives directed at digital innovation and IBD and immunology and IBD.

"Creating strong partnerships with the potential to discover game changing technologies and health solutions is a key priority for our company," said Charlie Baum, M.D., vice president and head, U.S. Medical and Scientific Affairs, Takeda. "This research assures continued scientific focus and exploration to help people affected by IBD, a chronic, challenging to treat disease that impacts as many as 1.6 million Americans and 5 million people globally."

During the three-year partnership, the University of Chicago will work to establish a unique patient physician digital platform that communicates real-time disease status, collates environmental, molecular, genetic and microbiome factors for each patient and creates a system for identifying personalized IBD therapy.

"We are very grateful for Takeda's vision and support in accelerating novel research of and care for people suffering from IBD," said David T. Rubin, M.D., the Joseph B. Kirsner Professor of Medicine and Chief, Section of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at the University of Chicago Medicine.

Mount Sinai will focus on immunology in IBD including discovering novel paradigms of lymphocytic homing to the colon, identifying the effect of the microbiome on homing to the colon and exploring therapeutic cell based approaches to suppress intestinal inflammation. The collaboration was facilitated through Mount Sinai Innovation Partners, an internal business unit of the Mount Sinai Health System that facilitates the real-world application and commercialization of Mount Sinai discoveries and the development of research partnerships.

"A partnership between Takeda and Mount Sinai could lead to identifying novel homing markers to the large bowel and define innovative therapeutic targets in patients with IBD," said Jean-Frédéric Colombel, M.D., Director of the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.