Using RNA therapy to treat ileal Crohn’s Disease
GENEGUT has one primary ambition: to create a first-of-its-kind, game-changing treatment for ileal Crohn’s Disease, addressing a significant unmet medical need, by making major advances in RNA-delivery technology to inflamed sites in the gut following oral administration.
The delivery of RNA will be enabled by a combination approach where novel biomaterials designed to overcome the barriers in the gastrointestinal tract, are synthesized into nanoparticles (NP) which encapsulate the RNA. Using an industry partner’s emergent capsule platform technology, the RNA is orally administered and locally tackles the inflammation in the intestinal tissue, avoiding systemic side effects.
Prof. Caitriona O’Driscoll, coordinator of the GENEGUT project, was recently interviewed by HNN 3.0 as part of their Horizon Health Impact Success Stories series.
On 25–26 June 2025, the GENEGUT consortium convened for its 7th General Assembly meeting, hosted by Uppsala University (UU) in Sweden. The two-day meeting marked project month 33 and brought together over 30 participants representing all nine project partners.
Coordinated by the University College Cork, GENEGUT brings together 9 Partners from 8 different countries to develop a revolutionary treatment for CD
Affecting about 3 million people in Europe alone, Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) has a drastic impact
on the quality of life – and new therapies are urgently needed
Given the clinical success of mRNA-based vaccines for COVID-19, now is the right time to further push beyond the state of the art in RNA-based therapies.
Funded by the European Union (GA 101057491) and supported the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) under contract number 22.00119. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
UK participants in Horizon Europe Project GENEGUT are supported by UKRI grant number 10042451 (Bangor University).