Inflammatory bowel disease research

The Center for Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is improving lives through research. With many of the top clinical experts in the field, our research aims to improve the health and wellbeing of children and their families affected by IBD — Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, IBD unclassified (IBD-U), and very early onset (VEO) IBD.

Our research is designed to improve and personalize treatment options and advance current knowledge of the disease. We are an international leader, not only in exploring new medical therapies in the laboratory, but also in applying these discoveries to real-life situations where their use has the potential to improve children’s lives.

The Center for Pediatric IBD is involved in more than 40 studies involving approximately 1,500 patients from around the world, making us the largest research program anywhere for pediatric IBD.

Although the exact cause of IBD is still unknown, the prevention and cure of IBD will result from our continued efforts to improve our understanding of the genetic, immunologic and environmental causes of IBD in at-risk individuals.

Our research models

Our investigative efforts focus on the following areas of interest:

Nutritional, non-pharmacological interventions
Clinical trials with novel drug therapies
Immunology
Genetic studies, including exome sequencing and genotyping
Microbiome studies
Enteroids exploration
A biorepository and tissue sample registry, with the goal of improving the quality of care for patients

Genetics

The initial onset of IBD has been associated with interactions between genes and environmental factors. To understand more about this complex disease, we are studying:

Genetic factors that control an individual’s immune response
The genetic makeup associated with characteristics of pediatric IBD, particularly those associated with diagnosis and treatment of children younger than age 6. Elements involved may include race, age at diagnosis, disease type (e.g., Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, IBD-U), location of disease activity, response to therapy, and risk of surgery.
VEO-IBD and genetic factors associated with the diagnosis and treatment of children younger than age 6.

Microbiome

Microbiome refers to the population of bacteria, yeast and viruses that live in and on humans. The primary goal of our IBD research is to characterize the microbiome in children with IBD compared to healthy children, with the goal of improving how we diagnose and treat the disease.

Specifically, we are researching:

How diet and antibiotic use affects the intestinal microbiome
The role of genetics and the composition of the gut microbiome

The Center for Pediatric IBD partners with the CHOP Microbiome Center for help with sequencing and analytics to advance research at CHOP. In collaboration with the PennCHOP Microbiome Program, the CHOP Microbiome Center is a sequencing and bioinformatics resource, providing end-to-end solutions for microbiome research.

The Center, under the guidance of Co-Directors Robert N. Baldassano, MD, and Frederic D. Bushman, PhD, offers next-generation DNA sequencing for microbiome studies and provides optimized workflows and protocols customized for each study. The Center’s services are available to researchers at CHOP, Penn, other academic institutions, and industry.

Our investigators in gastroenterology

Our IBD investigative collaborators in other disciplines

Research resources

The Center’s location within a hospital environment provides important resources to conduct successful clinical research.

The CHOP Research Institute is a facility specifically dedicated to the administration of all research conducted at CHOP.
The Hospital’s Institutional Review Board ensures the protection of subjects and compliance with federal law.
The clinical laboratory facilities in the Hospital are state accredited by the College of American Pathologists and certified by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The Center for Pediatric IBD embraces a multidisciplinary approach to our studies and collaborates with experts from other centers and programs, including the departments of Rheumatology, Immunology, Dermatology, Surgery, Radiology, Pathology, Nutrition and others.

To learn more about the current and ongoing research supported by the CHOP Center for Pediatric IBD, please email IBDResearch@chop.edu or use our Clinical Research Finder tool.

Quality Improvement (QI)

At CHOP, we strive to improve the quality, reliability and safety of the care we provide. We participate in several quality improvement (QI) and population management initiatives for pediatric IBD. We work within our QI group and with the Improve Care Now (ICN) Consortium to ensure we deliver standardized and evidence-driven care.

The ICN Consortium is a national program focused on developing and implementing Model IBD Care, a guideline for consistent, reliable care. ICN is a collaborative community of patients, parents, clinicians, and researchers working together to improve the health and care of children and youth with IBD. Learn more about our participation in this collaborative network.

Research at the Center for Pediatric IBD is made possible by the dedicated efforts of the IBD Family Resource Council (FRC). The FRC has raised nearly $2 million for IBD research at CHOP in the past 16 years.