Emerging drugs to treat Crohn's disease

Abstract

Importance of the field: Inflammatory bowel diseases are chronic inflammatory diseases that comprise of two forms – Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) – characterized by aberrant responses to luminal bacteria in genetically susceptible individuals. Whereas inflammation is limited to the large intestine in patients with UC, CD can affect all parts of the gastrointestinal tract. During disease exacerbations, pharmacological or surgical intervention is usually needed to re-establish remission; however, current therapeutic interventions cannot cure CD. As a subgroup of patients with CD will not be able to remain in remission with available drugs or suffer from side effects, new therapeutic strategies are needed.

Areas covered in this review: This review focuses on emerging drugs in the treatment of CD and reviews data on their efficacy and safety. An extensive review of the available literature was undertaken using MEDLINE to identify relevant studies.

What the reader will gain: The reader will learn about current therapeutic strategies in patients with CD and gain insights into emerging new drugs.

Take home message: As modification of the clinical course of CD becomes the therapeutic paradigm, potential future treatments have to induce mucosal healing in order to prevent long-term complications. New biologics show promising results.

Keywords::

• adhesion molecules
• CCX-282
• Crohn's disease
• cytokines
• drug development
• natalizumab
• small molecules
• ustekinumab