Dr. Steiner, who heads the UBC Division of Infectious Diseases, has published a number of important studies on the intestinal immune system. Now, a new three-year, $125,000 grant from Crohn’s and Colitis Canada will support his research into the changes that take place in damaged gut cells and how they compare to the permanent changes seen in people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Dr. Ted Steiner
“The challenge with treating IBD is that patients often relapse once treatment is stopped. We think this is because the inflammation associated with IBD causes permanent changes in the gastrointestinal tract at the cellular level,” Dr. Steiner says. “This grant will enable us to better understand the mechanism behind these changes and point to new forms of treatment.”
The Grants-in-Aid-of-Research program this year awarded a total of $2.5 million for innovative research in the field of IBD, a chronic disease that affects approximately 300,000 Canadians. That number is expected to reach 400,000 by the end of the decade, with seniors and children being the fastest-growing populations. Crohn’s and Colitis Canada estimates that IBD care and treatment costs the health care system $1.28 billion every year.
“At present, IBD treatment is a blunt instrument approach,” Dr. Steiner says. “For each patient, we try the same arsenal of drugs and see what works. This can be expensive, time-consuming, and isn’t always effective.”
Dr. Steiner is optimistic about the transformational potential of his team’s study: “If we can map out the mechanisms that cause these permanent changes, we may be able to tailor IBD treatment to individual patients, making it more effective in the first instance and decreasing the likelihood of relapse,” he says.
Learn more about Dr. Steiner’s work and the Crohn’s and Colitis Grants-in-Aid-of-Research program.