Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), including Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, are characterized by disabling inflammation of the wall of the digestive tract and affect 10 million people worldwide, approximately 250,000 people in France. There is no cure for these diseases, which evolve through periods of signs of inflammation and/or digestive symptoms linked to tissue damage, interspersed with periods of remission.
Several risk factors for IBD are suspected, including genetic and environmental factors. The prevalence of these diseases in industrialized countries suggests in particular a role of pollution and/or food in their occurrence. Moreover, the intestinal microbiota (more than 100,000 billion microorganisms: bacteria, viruses, parasites and non-pathogenic fungi) is also playing a central role in these debilitating disorders.

Several teams from Institut Cochin contribute to IBD research, especially in order to understand the links between imbalances in the composition of the microbiota and these inflammatory diseases, to elucidate the mechanisms of regeneration of the intestinal epithelium, and more broadly to understand the links between the intestinal epithelium and its microenvironment.