Inflammatory Bowel Disease Tracker: CMIT Flagship Project
Primary Researchers:
Eric Alm
Ashwin Ananthakrishnan
Marjolein Klaassen
Rinse Weersma
Principal Investigators:
Eric Alm (MIT)
Ashwin Ananthakrishnan (MGH)
Ramnik Xavier (Broad Institute)
Rinse Weersma (University Medical Center Groningen)
IBDTracker: Redefining Predictive Models for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Management
Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD), including Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis, are chronic conditions marked by unpredictable flare-ups when the host’s immune system to attack the gut’s native (commensal) bacteria, causing symptoms like frequent diarrhea, fecal incontinence, fever, fatigue, and abdominal pain. Disease flare-ups can be severe and highly disruptive to patients’ daily lives, highlighting the urgent need for better disease management.
We hypothesize that both Ulcerative Colitis (UC) and Crohn’s Disease (CD) can be better diagnosed and managed by integrating multiple high-resolution, non- or minimally invasive sources of data (such as behavioral data collected from wearable devices, and biochemical and microbiological assays utilizing frequent, at-home stool samples) to predict disease flare-ups before they occur. Predicting flares could enable clinicians and patients to intervene via medical, dietary, and/or behavioral modifications, potentially diminishing the likelihood or severity of a flare-up, as well as the significant psychological and psychosocial burden associated with the disease’s unpredictability. In addition, identifying key biomarkers of flares may provide researchers with novel targets for therapeutics.
The Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics is collaborating with Dr. Ashwin Ananthakrishnan at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, Dr. Rinse Weersma at the University Medical Center, Gröningen, the Netherlands, and Dr. Harris Wang at Columbia University on an observational longitudinal study to look for advance biomarkers of a disease flare.
IBDTracker launched in 2021, and completed patient enrollment in April 2024. The study is closely monitoring 50 IBD patients at MGH and 50 at UMCG on a weekly basis for one year, integrating multiple types of data generated from biological samples (stool, blood, and urine), physiological and behavioral data from a wearable device and smartphone application developed in-house for this study, as well as clinical data collected through regular check-ins. Data collection is anticipated to be completed by late summer, 2025. (Preliminary findings suggest that changes may be detected in the gut microbiome and shed host epithelial cells (present in feces) up to 4-6 weeks ahead of a clinical flare.) CMIT will use the data to build predictive models of inflammatory bowel disease dynamics, focusing on the period of time spanning the transition from remission to disease flare-ups, with the ultimate aim of developing a tool to empower clinicians and patients to manage and mitigate disease flares before they occur.
