AGEM-researcher, Dr. Andrew Li Yim has been awarded the prestigious Litwin IBD Pioneers grant from the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation (USA). The grant supports innovative clinical and translational research projects with the potential to impact the treatment of IBD patients in the near future. The program encourages novel research into the diagnosis, identification of clinically relevant subsets, treatments, and potential cures for inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). It funds innovative pilot research, allowing scientists to test their initial ideas and generate preliminary data. The project, titled Predicting
and understanding response to biological therapy at single-cell level, has been awarded $130,000 USD.
Andrew is a life scientist with a broad interest in various fields of research. After obtaining his Master's degree in Biology, he continued with a Marie Curie funded PhD at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers, University of Amsterdam and GlaxoSmithKline where he applied his bioinformatics skills in understanding the role of epigenetics in inflammatory diseases.
Andrew Li Yim, research associate at Amsterdam UMC
Therapeutics in Crohn’s disease
Despite the proven efficacy of monoclonal antibodies in inducing corticosteroid-free clinical remission in Crohn’s disease (CD) patients, sustained endoscopic remission at one year into treatment is observed in only 30% of the treated CD patients with many either failing to achieve primary mucosal response or losing response over time. Currently, no clinically validated biomarkers exist that predicts response to therapy. While we previously identified that DNA methylation of peripheral blood accurately predicts response to therapy, the biological interpretability is hampered by the fact that epigenetics, and hence DNA methylation, is a cell type-specific feature while peripheral blood is mixed cell population. Accordingly, the observed differences in DNA methylation could be the result of differences in cellular heterogeneity or actual differences in DNA methylation of a specific cell type.
Single-cell chararacterization of response vedolizumab and ustekinumab
We aim to characterize the single-cell repertoire of patients set to start either vedolizumab or ustekinumab through single-cell transcriptomic analyses. To accomplish the specified aims, a longitudinal case-control design will be adopted as samples in the form of peripheral blood and colonic biopsies from non-lesional areas will be collected prior to the start of treatment and during response assessment from both responders and non-responders as determined over the course of treatment.
Outlook
This research has the potential to unlock insights into the cellular mediators that associate with response prior to the start of treatment, which can subsequently become targets of interest for further research.
Other AGEM Reseracher involved in the project are Dr. Peter Henneman, Prof. Wouter de Jonge and Prof. Geert D'Haens.