A Quantitative Systems Pharmacology Model to Investigate the Crucial Role of Epithelial Damage in the Pathogenesis of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

In inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients, there is an imbalance between pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines. When the epithelium is damaged, overproduction of pro-inflammatory cytokines causes inflammation, damaging the epithelium further, resulting in a severe state caused by chronic inflammation. While loss of epithelial barrier function (EBF) is known to play an important role in IBD, current treatment mainly targets the resulting chronic inflammation. In this project, we built a QSP model investigating the crucial role of a damaged EBF in IBD pathogenesis.