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.
GENEGUT research was presented at the Controlled Release Society (CRS) Annual Meeting 2026, held in Lisbon, Portugal, through a poster presentation by Elisa Millet, Junior Scientist at Lonza.
GENEGUT Coordinator Prof. Caitriona O’Driscoll was invited to deliver a plenary lecture at the ICBTM Conference, held in Debrecen, Hungary, on 25 June 2026.
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.