Year 1

The objective of the project is to test regenerative medicine approaches using human embryonic and adult stem cells in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The strategy that we have proposed is to target the epithelial components of the disease and explore the potential of using hESCs as a cell-based therapy for IBD. The underlying hypotheses for this application are: (1) hESC-derived organoids can be used to ameliorate or cure colitis, (2) enriching these organoids for committed intestinal progenitors/stem cells will improve engraftment and regeneration, and (3) expansion and activation of endogenous ISCs can improve regeneration and re-establishment of the epithelial barrier in IBD. In the first year, as described in detail in the progress report, we have set up our systems and generated data for each of the Aims. We are preparing publications reporting data from Aims 1 and 3 for submission during the next reporting period.