Overview: Johnson & Johnson sponsored two satellite symposia at the 21st Congress of the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation (ECCO 2026). These symposia were predominantly based on practical and engaging patient case studies that showed how guselkumab clinical trial data can be applied in real-world inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) care. The goal was to give clinicians actionable, evidence-based guidance for IBD management.

Symposium 1
• Title: Mission remission: practical insights for Crohn’s disease in the IL 23 era
• Focus: Crohn's disease (CD)
• Presenters: Anthony Buisson, Axel Dignass, Catherine Reenaers and Stefan Schreiber
• Case types: Adult and elderly patients, across various clinical scenarios

Symposium 2
• Title: Charting the UC horizon: navigating IL 23 in clinical practice
• Focus: Ulcerative colitis (UC)
• Presenters: Ailsa Hart, James Lindsay, Elisabeth Schnoy and Bram Verstockt
• Case types: Biologic naive and biologic experienced patients

Did you miss these symposia? Click on the links below for the full on-demand recordings, and read further for some key highlights from each symposium.

Symposium 1: Mission remission: practical insights for Crohn’s disease in the IL-23 era
Symposium 2: Charting the UC horizon: navigating IL-23 in clinical practice

Axel Dignass reviewed 30 years of IBD progress, unmet needs and rising disease prevalence [1], noting that the guselkumab programme aims to shift care from disease control to disease modification. Stefan Schreiber explained the historical perspective of IL-23 and summarised the key differences between the three IL-23 inhibitors: risankizumab, mirikizumab and guselkumab.

Catherine Reenaers, Axel Dignass and Anthony Buisson presented different patient cases covering the age spectrum from early adulthood to middle age and then older age, with each age group presenting its own distinct challenges and goals.

Catherine Reenaers showcased how biologic-naive patients with moderate-to-severe CD need symptomatic relief and long-term disease control with an early, effective therapy, as the benefit may decline with each subsequent treatment [2]. Treatment with guselkumab in biologic-naive patients with a disease duration ≤2 years results in a benefit of up to 20% compared with ustekinumab for endoscopy-driven endpoints [3] (Fig. 1). In the GALAXI study, over 90% of patients in clinical remission at Week 48 also were corticosteroid-free for 90 days [4] and guselkumab showed superiority over ustekinumab in endoscopy-driven endpoints at Week 48 [5].

Bram Verstockt described the role of IL-23 in the pathophysiology of IBD and how binding of guselkumab to CD64 enables neutralisation of IL-23 at its cellular source in vitro [17]. Ailsa Hart, James Lindsay, Elisabeth Schnoy and Bram Verstockt then described two patient cases regarding guselkumab use in real-life clinical practice.

The first case study described a patient with UC and previous exposure to biologics. Guselkumab provides significantly better symptomatic response compared with placebo as early as Day 6 [18] and 30% higher clinical remission rates than placebo in patients exposed to one prior antitumour necrosis factor therapy [19].

The second case study described the efficacy and safety of guselkumab in a young, female, biologic-naive patient and highlighted that the 3-year long-term extension of QUASAR demonstrated high and sustained rates of clinical remission, endoscopic normalisation and histo-endoscopic mucosal improvement with guselkumab (Fig. 3) [20].