R&D

Takeda,aglobal biopharmaceutical company, is due to launch a project, INTERCEPT, which will use biomarkers to prevent symptomatic onset of Crohns Disease before the disease begins to affect patients, later in February. The trial is a first in Europe.

The INTERCEPT project will recruit 10,000 healthy relatives of patients with Crohn’s Disease from seven European countries. Project goals consist of verifying and clinically validating a panel of biomarkers, as well as building a blood risks score that could identify individuals with a high risk of developing Crohns Disease within five years after the initial evaluation. Early detection, enabled by this development, could enable healthcare professionals to diagnose the disease in its very early stages, potentially keeping it from progressing to debilitating stages.

Co-lead primary investigator for INTERCEPT, Professor Jean-Frédéric Colombel, director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, US, stated: “For the first time, researchers from multiple European countries, North America and South Korea are working together to predict and prevent Crohn’s Disease, reaching a milestone in the long path we began to walk many years ago. Our combined success would reinforce the concept that immune-mediated diseases that not only affect the gut but also the joints, the skin and the brain, can be prevented”.

The €38bn INTERCEPT project is supported by Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking, which receives support from the EU’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme and European Coordination Committee of the Radiological, Electromedical and Healthcare IT Industry; European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations; Europa Bío; MedTech Europe; Vaccines Europe; Ludger Ltd; Celltrion Inc and Prometheus Laboratories Inc.

Crohns Disease is a type of inflammatory bowel disorder, and affects one in 123 people in the UK.