Crohns Disease: A Therapy Update Report

Crohn’s disease (CD) is a chronic relapsing inflammatory condition, which can affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract. The main symptoms are abdominal pain, diarrhoea and weight loss. The management of this debilitating condition includes the alleviation of symptoms and efforts to induce remission and healing of the intestinal mucosa. Common drugs used for CD include corticosteroids, aminosalicylates, immunomodulatory agents and antibiotics. Whilst these drugs can be effective in the management of CD, side effects and limitations in their ability to target and reverse the disease process has increased demand for better agents. Infliximab (Remicade), which targets TNFa, offers significant hope to Crohn’s sufferers and many other drug candidates are in the development pipeline. Today there are around 25 candidates being developed for the treatment of CD as the primary indication and more than 40 as a secondary indication. These are described and discussed in this report. The global incidence of CD is unknown, however in Europe and North America it ranges from 3-20 cases per 100,000 individuals per year. In the US, the prevalence of this disease is reported to be between 400,000 and 600,000 and extrapolation of these US figures suggests that there may be as many as 9 to 13 million Crohn’s sufferers globally. This Therapy Update reviews current drugs and pipeline candidates for the treatment of CD (Oct. 2007). This report covers the description of CD, disease statistics, unmet need, current drugs and pipeline candidates, analysis and key findings.