What we have found is one of the very central pathways that goes wrong when people get inflammatory bowel disease and this has been something of a holy grail, said Dr James Lee...
Even for pure, fundamental immunology this is a really exciting discovery. But to show this is dysregulated in people who get disease not only gives us a better understanding of the disease, it tells us this is something we can treat.
More than half a million people in the UK have inflammatory bowel disease, the two main forms of which are Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, with at least 7 million affected globally.
Lee's research team stumbled on the discovery after investigating a gene desert, a stretch of DNA on chromosome 21 that does not code for proteins, which has previously been linked to IBD and other autoimmune diseases.
#inflammatory-bowel-disease #immune-disorders #biological-pathway #drug-treatment #genetic-mechanisms
[
add
]
[
|
|
...
]