Occtopus has funded researchers, led by Matthias Friedrich (pictured) at the Kennedy Institute are investigating whether the nervous system within the gut could provide a new way to understand and ultimately treat Crohn’s disease.
Crohn’s disease is a long-term inflammatory bowel disease that affects about 1 in 300 people. A growing range of treatments, largely targeting the immune system, can help control inflammation. However, many people continue to experience recurring disease and some require surgery.
Researchers at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, in collaboration with colleagues from the Nuffield Department of Medicine (NDM), and the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences (NDS), have questioned whether other inflammatory pathways could be driving the disease. They are exploring one potentially overlooked part of the picture: the enteric nervous system, a network of nerves and supporting cells embedded within the wall of the gut.
Previous research supported by our programme found that changes in the enteric nervous system, particularly in cells known as enteric glial cells, may play an active role in intestinal inflammation. The findings suggest that these changes could contribute to Crohn’s disease in some people and potentially provide a new target for treatment.
The new three-year project supported by us will build on this work to understand which patients have these changes and whether they can be detected in tissue samples routinely collected during an endoscopy. The researchers hope this could eventually lead to a biomarker that identifies patients who might benefit from treatments targeting the enteric nervous system.
The team will also use advanced three-dimensional techniques to map the enteric nervous system within Crohn’s disease tissue. They aim to develop laboratory models to investigate how these cells behave and begin testing potential treatments.
The project brings together expertise in Crohn’s disease, the enteric nervous system, laboratory research and clinical care across Oxford. It is led by Dr Matthias Friedrich at the John Radcliffe Hospital, and Dr Fränze Progatzky, at the Kennedy Institute for Rheumatology, with Dr Katherine Baker and and Dr Bruce George from Oxford University Hospitals as a co-investigators, alongside Dr Khalid Shamiyah from the Nuffield Department of Medicine bringing clinical Crohn’s disease expertise to the study.
Funding from us is enabling the researchers to take their earlier discoveries into a larger, more clinically focused study, supporting a DPhil student, as well as providing access to patient samples, laboratory research, and advanced tissue analysis.
The previous study supported by the Oxford Colon Cancer Trust, titled ‘Epigenetic modulation of stromal cell states underpins pathological tissue niches in Crohn’s disease’ has recently been published in Nature Immunology.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-026-02617-0