Sebastian Zeissig  © ECCO

During the ECCO’20 Vienna Congress, the Scientific Committee cordially welcomed Konstantinos Papamichail and Yves Panis as new members of SciCom.

Konstantinos Papamichail has been an ECCO Member since 2007 and has participated in several ECCO Activities, including the 7th ECCO Advanced Course and the ECCO ‘EXIT strategies’ Topical Review. He is a reviewer of the ECCO Grants and also a member of the editorial board of JCC. After completing his PhD in Pharmacology and his GI Fellowship in Greece, Kostas joined the Leuven IBD group as a post-doctoral researcher for 3 years and was also a recipient of an ECCO Fellowship. For the last 5 years he has been working at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where his research has focussed on the role of therapeutic drug monitoring of biologics in IBD. He is the author of numerous publications and his goal is to stimulate scientific interactions in the ECCO Community and beyond and to interact with the other ECCO Committees in order to promote and support national and international IBD research efforts towards the better care of patients with IBD.

Sebastian Zeissig  © ECCO

One of the main goals of ECCO is to promote IBD-related basic and clinical research as well as to foster interaction and productive collaboration among European research groups working in the IBD field. To achieve this goal, ECCO supports numerous funding schemes with different scopes including ECCO Fellowships, Grants, and Travel Awards.

Rikke Edelbo © Rikke Edelbo

I would like to thank the N-ECCO Committee for awarding me the N-ECCO Travel Award, which was a great financial support and helped me for my studies in Stockholm.

My focus was primarily use of the telephone in patient contacts, patient education, management of newly diagnosed IBD patients and independent nursing activities.

ECCO-AOCC Travel Grant Report

Bei Tan © Bei Tan

This grant gave me the opportunity to increase my knowledge on the management of IBD patients in general and on the management of IBD in pregnancy in particular. At the Erasmus MC, I attended the IBD specialist/pregnancy clinics, which greatly enriched my experience. Further, I learned more about the use of IBD endoscopy, double-balloon enteroscopy, and intestinal ultrasound within the clinical care pathway, and I intend to incorporate this knowledge to some extent within our IBD centre.

ECCO Travel Award Report

Elise van Praag © Elise van Praag

Last year I was granted the ECCO Travel Award to visit St. Mark's Hospital in London. My visit took place in September of this year and was a great success. The ECCO Travel Award made it possible for me to help set up and coordinate our multicentre, international prospective cohort study which is focussing on the surgical treatment of perianal fistulas in patients with Crohn’s Disease.

Stopping Aminosalicylate Therapy in Inactive Crohn’s Disease (STATIC) study: a randomized, open-label, non-inferiority trial

Gordon Moran © Gordon Moran

Aim of research

Oral 5-ASA agents have proven effective for inducing and maintaining remission in mild-to-moderate Ulcerative Colitis (UC) and thus are commonly used as first-line agents. However, in contrast to UC, there is uncertainty regarding their effectiveness in Crohn’s Disease (CD). For induction of remission in CD, a Cochrane review of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and meta-analysis found no evidence that low/high dose 5-ASA was superior to placebo. Several studies originating from North America and Europe indicate that 5-ASA agents are the most commonly prescribed drug class for patients with CD. Therefore, there is discordance between clinical prescribing practice and evidence from RCTs.

Integrative analysis of the intestinal epithelium and the mucosal environment in paediatric versus adult-onset Crohn’s Disease

Azucena Salas © Azucena Salas

Aim of Research

Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBDs), including Crohn’s Disease (CD) and Ulcerative Colitis, can manifest from childhood to late adulthood. However, IBD presents age-dependent differences related to phenotype, location and behaviour. Recent studies have revealed that functional alterations in the epithelial layer and in its interplay with the intestinal environment can contribute to IBD pathogenesis. Our research aims to explore the crosstalk between the epithelial barrier, the underlying mucosa and the microbiota in patients with CD using an intestinal epithelial organoid culture system to identify potential mechanisms driving early disease onset.

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for the Treatment of Perianal fistulas in Crohn’s Disease (HOT-TOPIC trial)

Nina Lansdorp © Nina Lansdorp

Aim of Research

Perianal fistulas are a debilitating complication of Crohn’s Disease (CD). Current treatment options have a relatively low success rate and a high recurrence risk. The role of hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) therapy in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is increasingly appreciated, and positive outcomes for fistulising CD have been reported in animal studies and small case series. The aim of the HOT-TOPIC trial is to investigate the therapeutic efficacy and feasibility of HBO in patients suffering from therapy-refractory perianal fistulising CD.

Exploring the heterogeneity of macrophages in Crohn's Disease

Gareth Rhys-Jones © Gareth Rhys-Jones

Aim of Research

To identify the biological processes underpinning the macrophage (Μφ) contribution to the pathogenesis of Crohn’s Disease (CD) by:

• Investigating gut mucosal Μφ heterogeneity in newly diagnosed, treatment-naïve CD patients
• Investigating Μφ subset specific dysregulation using a combination of new flow cytometry approaches and transcriptome and chromatin analysis.

Fungal feelings: Abdominal pain during remission

René van den Wijngaard © René van den Wijngaard

Aim of Research

In the absence of ongoing inflammation, a significant proportion of IBD patients in remission continue to suffer from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)-like symptoms such as pain and diarrhoea (IBD-IBS). Abdominal pain in IBD-IBS is an under-treated problem with a negative impact on quality of life. In IBS, we recently provided evidence that abdominal pain may arise due to immune recognition of an aberrant gut mycobiome. The possible relevance of the gut mycobiome in IBD-IBS has never been studied previously. We aim to perform (1) a descriptive study to establish faecal mycobiome differences when comparing IBD patients in remission with and without IBS complaints and (2) a functional study to show the relevance of the IBD-IBS mycobiome for abdominal pain in a human-to-rat faecal microbiota transfer (FMT) model of post-inflammatory colitis.