Helmsley Charitable Trust Grants $4.3 Million to Develop Tools for the Clinical Testing of Anti-fibrotic Treatments for Crohn’s Disease Patients
The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust has awarded $4.3 million to Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, and Robarts Clinical Trials, Inc. to launch the Stenosis Therapy and Anti-Fibrotic Research (STAR) consortium for the development of imaging and patient-reported outcome tools that will enable the clinical testing of new anti-fibrotic therapies for Crohn’s disease patients.
People with Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory condition of the intestinal tract, frequently develop stricturing or narrowing of the intestinal tract due to excessive scar tissue formation, known as fibrosis. Although advances have been made in the treatment of gut inflammation, the development of treatments for Crohn’s disease fibrosis has been hindered due to a lack of appropriate tools that enable clinical testing of anti-fibrotic drugs.
The STAR consortium, for which Cleveland Clinic will be the coordinating center, will be co-led by Florian Rieder, M.D., Cleveland Clinic, Joel Fletcher, M.D., Mayo Clinic and Brian Feagan M.D., Robarts Clinical Trials, Inc. The consortium will draw upon the expertise of each of the centers to develop and validate a patient-reported outcome tool that measures signs, symptoms and impacts experienced by stricturing Crohn’s disease patients that are indicative of a therapy’s success or failure, as well as an imaging system to measure how these strictures respond to anti-fibrotic therapies.
“Addressing the unmet medical needs of patients with Crohn’s disease is at the center of our Program’s mission. The STAR consortium represents a tremendous opportunity to create the tools necessary for advancing anti-fibrotic therapeutic clinical trials,” said Dr. Garabet Yeretssian, Director of the Helmsley Charitable Trust’s Crohn’s Disease Program...