A crash course in understanding Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD)
Our series of morning lectures sharing science from across the Crick in a simple and accessible way continues.
These events will be of particular interest to those who may not have an advanced background in science, but are keen to discover more about the exciting research happening at the Crick.
This lecture will be with James Lee, Group Leader for the Genetic mechanisms of disease laboratory at the Crick.
Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are increasingly common, incurable forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which now affect ~1 in 100 people in the UK. IBD usually develops in young adults causing debilitating symptoms that disrupt education, relationships, employment and family life.
Better treatments are urgently needed, with up to 20% of ulcerative colitis patients and 50% of Crohn’s disease patients still requiring major surgery for refractory disease, often with the need for a stoma. James Lee’s lab at the Crick use genetics to better understand what goes wrong when IBD develops in order to identify new and improved therapeutic opportunities. His talk will describe what is known about IBD currently, and what major challenges are to improving treatment of IBD in the future.
James is a Clinician Scientist Group Leader at the Crick and a Consultant Gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital. He completed medical training at the University of Oxford and did his PhD at the University of Cambridge before spending 2 years as a visiting scholar at Harvard University. James established a research group in Cambridge in 2018 and joined the Francis Crick Institute in 2021. His work has been recognised internationally with prizes including the Sir Francis Avery-Jones Medal (British Society of Gastroenterology, 2018), the United European Gastroenterology Society Rising Star Award (2018), and a Lister Prize Fellowship (2021).
