The 5th ECCO Basic Imaging Workshop was successfully conducted on site during the 19th ECCO Congress in Stockholm in February 2024, as a part of ECCO’s educational programme. The workshop saw two sessions on the same day due to the high demand for participation. A heartfelt thank you goes out to the speakers and tutors for their dedicated efforts in covering both sessions. Gastroenterologists with expertise in intestinal ultrasound from ECCO and IBUS, along with radiologists from the European Society of Gastrointestinal and Abdominal Radiology (ESGAR), collaborated to provide attendees with a comprehensive immersion into imaging in IBD.
The 22nd ECCO IBD Intensive Course for Trainees took place on February 21, 2024, in the vibrant city of Stockholm. Despite the cold and moody weather outside, the course itself was a lively and buzzing experience, filled with enthusiastic discussions and valuable insights.
A total of 116 abstracts with an epidemiology theme were accepted for presentation at the ECCO Congress in 2024. This represented an increase over the previous year, with total submissions in this category up by 20%. It is clear that ECCO Members and IBD researchers see epidemiology as a vital part of our understanding of the overall picture of IBD aetiology, management and outcomes. Here we highlight just a few of the top abstracts that caught our eye.
ClinCom organised two courses at the recent 19th Congress of ECCO in Stockholm. The first course was the 9th ClinCom Workshop, which comprised two sessions and attracted 39 participants.
At ECCO’24, Stockholm, the winners of the ECCO Fellowships and Grants programme received their certificates, presented by SciCom Chair Marc Ferrante together with President Britta Siegmund. This year, a record number of grants were awarded, including the new Global Grant designed for low and lower-middle income countries as well as the IIS Registry Grant given for the first time.
At the last ECCO Congress, we had three members stepping down from the ECCO Scientific Committee: Marc Ferrante (Leuven, Belgium; Member since 2019, Chair since 2023), Yves Panis (Clichy, France; Member since 2020) and Konstantinos Papamichail (Boston, US; Member since 2020). Although all three of them served on SciCom in a period greatly impacted by the pandemic, together with the other SciCom Members they ensured a seamless continuation of SciCom activities and the initiation of new ones.
The Y-ECCO Interview Corner is a chance to get to know people inside ECCO. Mark Samaan has been a fixture on the Y-ECCO Committee since 2018, and is the current Chair. He is a consultant gastroenterologist with an interest in IBD clinical trials. He has had an education in IBD spanning two continents and is a keen swimmer. We sat down to talk about his experience in IBD, and what it’s like to support a football team who famously achieve very little.
Submucosal injection of the RNA nucleotide GUT-1 in active ulcerative colitis patients: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 2a induction trial.
Atreya R, Kuhbacher T, Waldner M, et al.
J Crohns Colitis 2023. doi: 10.1093/ecco-jcc/jjad162. Online ahead of print.
Despite an increasing number of therapeutic options for Ulcerative Colitis (UC), many patients still have disease which progresses over time, and there has been renewed interest in and improved understanding of the chronic fibrosis and remodelling that occurs in UC [1–3]. In particular, there has been a growing appreciation of both the importance of the extracellular matrix (ECM) for remodelling in UC and the potential to target the ECM with new therapeutic agents [4]. One such target is carbohydrate sulphotransferase 15 (CHST15). This is a type II transmembrane Golgi protein that biosynthesises highly sulphated disaccharide units (E-units) of chondroitin sulphate, which binds to various functional proteins and pathogenic microorganisms. Targeting this molecule in mouse models has previously been shown to offer promising signals for ameliorating colitis [5]. Based on this promising pre-clinical data, blockade of CHST15 has emerged as a potentially promising therapeutic target, and such blockade can be achieved by a silencing RNA oligonucleotide molecule called GUT-1 (previously called STNM01). A prior phase I clinical trial demonstrated the safety of GUT-1 in patients with Crohn’s Disease [6]. Accordingly, Atreya and colleagues now sought to evaluate the safety, as well as the efficacy and mode of action, of GUT-1 in patients with UC as part of a phase IIa placebo-controlled, clinical trial.
The management of Crohn’s Disease (CD) is dependent on many factors, including disease activity, site of involvement and the need to tailor treatment for each individual patient [1]. Moreover, features such as obstruction, fistulation, strictures and abscesses can all add to the complexity of CD management. While surgery has played a large role in the management of these patients, it is by no means a cure and the risk of relapse and repeat surgeries remains high [2, 3]. Accordingly, there continues to be a large unmet need for the development of novel medications that target distinct mechanisms of action in order to provide symptomatic and endoscopic control for patients with active disease. In parallel with this need to develop new medications, there has been an increasing desire for fast-acting medications, and movement towards oral administration, which may help both to reduce costs for hospitals and patients and to enhance aspects that are important to patients, such as quality of life and work productivity [4, 5].
Intestinal barrier healing is superior to endoscopic and histologic remission for predicting major adverse outcomes in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: The Prospective ERIca Trial
Mucosal healing (MH) in both Crohn's Disease (CD) and Ulcerative Colitis (UC) has been recognised as an important treatment target for many years. Indeed, the 2021 update of the Selecting Therapeutic Targets (STRIDE) consensus reaffirmed MH as the top priority among long-term treatment objectives [1]. Nonetheless, it is important to note that endoscopic inflammation may not always mirror the histological picture. Histological healing is an emerging endpoint in IBD. This is particularly true in UC, in which it represents a deeper level of recovery with some early evidence for correlation with better long-term outcomes; for CD, however, findings have been more controversial [2, 3]. Despite the increasing focus on histology, histological scoring systems are complex, with only two validated ones, both in the setting of UC, i.e. there is no validated scoring system in the context of CD.
Robin Dart
