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$3 million Center for Integrative Studies in IBD planned for Mount Sinai
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The Sanford J. Grossman Charitable Trust has pledged $3 million to create the Center for Integrative Studies in Inflammatory Bowel Disease at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, which will strive to develop personalized treatments for Crohn’s disease and understanding disease progression, according to a press release.
“Mount Sinai has a large and unique data set on patients: clinical symptoms and history, pathology reports on resected gut tissue, genomics and family history, and radiology,” Sanford J. Grossman, PhD, founder of the trust, said in the release. “My hope is that the integration and analysis of this data will enable a better understanding of the manifestations and natural histories of Crohn’s disease, and with that knowledge, therapies will be developed to beneficially alter the natural course of the disease. At the very least, I hope that there will be a better understanding of the biological processes that lead to various types of stricture formation, and some suggestions as to how strictures can be prevented.”
The trust has pledged $1 million initially and an additional $2 million to be disbursed to the center upon reaching specific milestones described in the agreement, the release said.
“Dr. Grossman’s magnificent generosity will enable an ideal collaboration among some of the nation’s leading basic research scientists and clinician scientists in IBD, to distinguish different Crohn’s disease types to better understand the disease course and selection of personalized therapies,” Asher Kornbluth, MD, clinical professor of medicine and gastroenterology at the Icahn School of Medicine, said in the release. “It is the ideal paradigm of translational research.”
A multidisciplinary group will collaborate at the center in an effort to understand the basic mechanisms of intestinal inflammation and cellular differentiation and hypertrophy that lead to stricture formation in Crohn’s disease, according to the release. The group will include pathologists, radiologists, geneticists, immunologists and gastroenterologists who will work on specific pathologic and radiologic evaluations, improving tissue banking systems, genetic and cellular analyses, and combining basic science and clinical discoveries.