Each year, approximately 2 million people in the United States are affected by Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, said Aaron Anselmo, assistant professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy.
Currently, approved medications and treatment options for those suffering from these diseases focus on treatments that block the immune response throughout the body, which can have adverse side effects. So, Anselmo, Ph.D., is on a mission to find the cause of inflammation in the intestines with a goal of preventing and curing Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
To support his work, Anselmo recently received an R21 grant from the National Institutes of Health, totaling more than $565,000. This R21 grant encourages the development of new research activities and supports diversity in the research field.
With this grant, Anselmo will work to develop a novel approach to treat experimental colitis using living biological therapeutics. The project will investigate how the delivery location, duration, and concentration of living biological therapeutics dictates their adhesion and colonization of the gastrointestinal tract. From there, Anselmo and team plan to design a specific living biological therapeutic formulation to achieve the optimal delivery parameters for highly specific and localized treatment of experimental colitis.
“It will be great to see that what we create may one day help people living with these diseases,” Anselmo said.
He will be working in collaboration with UNC School of Medicine’s Dr. Balfour Sartor, Midget Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, who also serves as a mentor on Anselmo’s Campbell Mentoring Committee.
Anselmo joined the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in 2017, as an assistant professor in the Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics. Anselmo, who has authored over 35 peer-reviewed publications, received his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, then earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and recently completed his postdoctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.