Takeda Pharmaceuticals U.S.A., Inc. has entered a multi-year research partnership with two leading academic centers with a commitment to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) research and care. The partnership, with the University of Chicago and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, aims to advance novel therapies and treatment paradigms through information sharing, addressing research and data gaps, and collaborating on clinical and health outcome studies, as well as sharing of resources including lab techniques, reagents and cell lines.

“Creating strong partnerships with the potential to discover game changing technologies and health solutions is a key priority for our company,” said Charlie Baum, M.D., vice president and head, U.S. Medical and Scientific Affairs, Takeda. “This research assures continued scientific focus and exploration to help people affected by IBD, a chronic, challenging to treat disease that impacts as many as 1.6 million Americans and 5 million people globally.”

During the three-year partnership, the University of Chicago will work to establish a unique patient physician digital platform that communicates real-time disease status, collates environmental, molecular, genetic and microbiome factors for each patient and creates a system for identifying personalized IBD therapy. “We are very grateful for Takeda’s vision and support in accelerating novel research of and care for people suffering from IBD,” said David T. Rubin, M.D., the Joseph B. Kirsner Professor of Medicine and Chief, Section of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at the University of Chicago Medicine.

Mount Sinai will focus on immunology in IBD including discovering new paradigms of lymphocytic homing to the colon and exploring therapeutic cell based approaches to suppress intestinal inflammation. “A partnership between Takeda and Mount Sinai could lead to identifying novel homing markers to the large bowel and define innovative therapeutic targets in patients with IBD,” said Jean-Frédéric Colombel, M.D., director of the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

“Takeda is dedicated to being a catalyst for scientific discovery that can profoundly advance patient care,” said Ramona Sequeira, president, Takeda Pharmaceuticals U.S.A., Inc. “We are enthusiastic to partner with these tremendous academic centers. We anticipate that these collaborative initiatives will yield meaningful, ground-breaking research with the potential to improve patient outcomes in IBD.”