Renewal of the NIDDK Inflammatory Bowel Disease Genetics Consortium (IBDGC)

September 2025 Council

Lead Division/Office

DDN

Point(s) of Contact

Terez Shea-Donohue, Ph.D.; Ludmila Pawlikowska, Ph.D.

Executive Summary

The NIDDK Inflammatory Bowel Disease Genetics Consortium (IBDGC) has led international efforts resulting in the identification of >300 IBD risk loci across different patient populations and the characterization of underlying biological mechanisms. Despite advances in biological understanding and the development of a range of biologic therapies, IBD remains a chronic, severe and heterogenous disease with no cure and a need for multiple medical interventions over the life course. Diagnostic biomarkers and accurate predictors of critical outcomes such as disease remission, recurrence, and response to specific therapies are lacking. Identification of as many sources of biological variance in disease as possible is necessary to fully understand the interactions of environmental and genetic effects in the disease course, and to integrate these interactions in predictive models. This initiative seeks to renew the NIDDK IBDGC with a continued mission to leverage advances in biological understanding and data science towards development of disease predictors and biomarkers with the goal of improving medical management and advancing precision medicine for all IBD patients. Toward these goals, the IBDGC will build on extensive patient cohorts enrolled across the US, banked biospecimens and advances in molecular analysis and data science, and continue follow-up and enrollment of IBD patients into longitudinal studies and mechanistic studies in biospecimens and experimental models.