Our team has conducted a prospective cohort study to better understand immune response to vedolizumab, a monoclonal antibody treatment for Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). Vedolizumab, which blocks lymphocyte homing to the gut by inhibiting integrin α4β7 interactions, has shown promise in inducing clinical remission. However, many patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) do not respond the treatment and do not reach full remission. Regarding that, the signature of non-responders to vedolizumab as well as depiction of predictors of treatment success is essential.
In this study, we applied advanced multimodal profiling to analyze immune cell changes in the blood of IBD patients before and after vedolizumab treatment. Findings revealed notable shifts in both innate and adaptive immune cell populations, with a specific T-cell signature emerging as a predictor of treatment failure. These insights, obtained using machine learning models, may inform more personalized IBD therapies by helping clinicians to identify patients likely to respond to vedolizumab. Our study concluded that a specific T-cell signature could help predict therapy response, advancing personalized treatment options for IBD.

These results were published in the September 2024 issue of Gastroenterology.

ERC Starting Grant 2022 for Ahmed N. Hegazy 

Intestinal fibrosis is a common and serious complication of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). To date, no specific medicine can yet prevent or reverse intestinal fibrosis. The aim of our ERC-StG 2022 project “iMOTIONS” is to gain a molecular understanding of the disturbed cell communication in the intestine, define novel biomarkers to identify patients at risk of developing intestinal fibrosis, and provide the means to prevent and treat fibrotic disease.
Looking forward to working with my current and future lab members on immune-stromal crosstalk in IBD both at the Charité –Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Leibniz-Institute Deutsches Rheuma-Forschungszentrum Berlin.