Judy Cho, MD, is recognized by the Sherman Prize for her pioneering research into the genetics of IBD and the development of personalized medicine.

Judy Cho, MD, is the Dean and Ward-Coleman Professor of Translational Genetics and director of the Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalised Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

TRANSCRIPT:

My name is Judy Cho. I'm the director of the Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine at the Icahn Institute of Mount Sinai. It's an enormous honor to be awarded the Sherman Prize together with Phil Fleshner and Ed Barnes.

I would like to express my gratitude to the Sherman Prize Committee, chaired by Dermot McGovern and many additional friends and colleagues throughout the years in inflammatory bowel disease. It's also a pleasure to have these prizes announced at the Advances in IBD meeting which I've attended for many years.

The focus of my research for many years has been studying the genetics of inflammatory bowel disease. Together in a collaboration with Gabriel Nunez at the University of Michigan, we identified that NOD2 mutations confer risk for Crohn's disease, which is the largest-effect genus associated in European ancestry Crohn's disease.

Many investigators have made significant advances in our understanding of NOD2 over the years, but our group reported earlier this year the understanding that NOD2 mutations confer risk, in part, through ultradifferentiation of circulating blood monocytes. Instead of simply being differentiated into macrophages, they can also differentiate into these activated fibroblasts which can contribute to pathogenicity.

Through this work, we identify, together with a lot of the other pathways that have been implicated in anti-TNF refractory Crohn's disease, that targeting of the gp130 pathway, which is common to IL-6, IL-11, and OSM, may be a particularly important and effective means of targeting anti-TNF refractory Crohn's disease.

What I hope for the field, moving forward in the future, is that we work together as a field, we train the next generation of IBD investigators to identify new cells and new gene targets that may be important in making a major difference in the outcomes of our patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Thank you.