Recent advances in inflammatory bowel disease therapy

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a group of chronic, relapsing disorders of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract that significantly affect patient's quality of life. The main goals of IBD treatment are long-lasting clinical remission without serious adverse events. The lack of fully effective treatment urges researchers to seek for new therapeutic strategies and design of novel anti-inflammatory compounds. In this review, we focus on the latest advances in the IBD therapy. We characterize the clinical efficacy and mechanism of action of stem cell-, antibody- and small molecule-based methods of treatment that already reached clinic or are currently evaluated in clinical studies. The scope of this article is on agents targeting interleukin 12 and 23, integrins α4β7 and αEβ7, mucosal vascular addressin cell adhesion molecule, janus kinases, sphingosine-1-phosphate and toll-like receptor 9. We also describe recent advances in the discovery of biomarkers in IBD.