(Xinhua) -- Chinese and foreign researchers have jointly demonstrated that an innovative drug is effective in treating moderate or severe ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease, providing a new treatment option.
Inflammatory bowel disease, which is a group of chronic inflammatory diseases, mainly includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, both of which are prone to recurrent attacks.
Since current drugs show weak therapeutic efficacy on IBD, the treatment strategy is to control the symptoms of the disease and prevent recurrence by suppressing overactive immune responses.
The homegrown drug, olamicept, is a soluble fusion protein that can selectively inhibit interleukin-6 transient signaling. During the phase II clinical trial, a joint team led by researchers from the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University in collaboration with counterparts from 22 hospitals and research centers in East Asia conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study.
In this context; Zhang Shenghong, a team member from the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, said that a total of 91 adult patients with active ulcerative colitis with an average age of 41 years were included in the study that began in February 2018, and they were randomly divided into three groups. In roughly equal numbers, they were each given intravenous 600-milligram or 300-milligram doses of olamkicept, or a placebo, respectively, for 12 weeks.
The results indicated that the drug "Olamcicept" at a dose of 600 milligrams had shown an effective therapeutic effect on patients with moderate or severe ulcerative colitis by significantly improving their clinical symptoms and biological indicators.
turn; The drug is safe and well tolerated, said Chen Minhu, the team leader, and can effectively reduce complications and deaths among patients with IBD. The drug is planned to enter phase III clinical trials this year.
The results of the study were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.