Where Ideas Grow

Salomé Pinho draws in more funding

Researcher Salomé Pinho, leader of the Immunology, Cancer GlycoMedicine group, was recently honored by the International Organization for the Study of Intestinal Inflammatory Diseases (IOIBD) - the only worldwide organization dedicated to these chronic and disabling gastrointestinal diseases - with the financing of an innovative project that aims to develop new methodologies to identify the causes of the disease. The ultimate goal is to advance strategies for early diagnosis and prevention of disease.

 

The IOIBD - which brings together physicians and scientists from Europe, USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, New Zealand and South America - has the mission of promoting the health of people with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis), defining guidelines for patient care, education and research. One of the ways it acts is to finance innovative projects and large-scale trials with the objective of contributing in the long term to the clarification of the causes of these diseases and to the development of a causal and curative treatment. This funding from the IOIBD is due to the “recognition of research work in the area of Inflammatory Bowel Disease led by researcher Salomé Pinho”. This is the first time that the IOIBD has awarded a researcher in Portugal.

 

It should be remembered that one of the scientific milestones of this Portuguese research group was the pioneering studies that allowed the identification of a deficiency in a carbohydrate or glycan of the T lymphocytes of the gut of patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease. The team demonstrated that this sugar deficiency is associated with the hyperactivation of intestinal inflammation, which has enabled them to develop new therapeutic strategies and new biomarkers of disease prognosis. These findings were recently published in two high impact international journals: Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences and the Journal of Crohns and Colitis.

 

For the Portuguese researcher, receiving a distinction from IOIBD is "synonymous with international recognition of the work we have developed. This project that IOIBD has just distinguished is innovative and brings together the scientific know-how of two complementary research groups, the i3S leading group and an American research group at Mont Sinai Hospital in New York, led by a worldwide reference in the field of Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Prof. Jean-Frederic Colombel.

 

“This international project”, says Salomé Pinho, “will allow the development of innovative techniques and methodologies that will be used to characterize a globally unique population of patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease in order to identify causal mechanisms of the disease and, thus, to find new strategies for preventing the development of the disease”.

 

“We are excited to begin this collaboration with Salomé Pinho’s group, given her internationally recognized experience in glycosylation processes. Our most recent results point to the possible implication of the glycosylation pathway in the early stages of Crohn's disease. This collaboration can lead to innovative discoveries in the prognosis and eventually prevention of this devastating disease”, said Jean-Frederic Colombel, MD, gastroenterologist, director of the Clinical and Research Center for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases at the Icahn College of Medicine, Mount Sinai, New York, USA.