Crohn's disease causes inflammation anywhere in the digestive tract, most commonly in the small intestine and colon. About 780,000 people in the U.S. have Crohn's. Treatment has advanced significantly with biologic drugs and JAK inhibitors, but many people still cycle through medications or need surgery.
What's actually going on in research
Trials are testing oral IL-23 inhibitors that may work as well as infusions, drugs targeting specific immune pathways like S1P and TL1A, fecal transplant to restore gut bacteria, stem cell approaches for severe disease, and stricture treatments to avoid surgery. Researchers are also studying how to predict which drug will work for each person.
IL-23 and TL1A inhibitors
New oral drugs that block IL-23 signaling are being tested against injectable biologics. TL1A inhibitors target a different immune pathway and may help people who haven't responded to TNF blockers like adalimumab.
Microbiome therapies
Studies are testing whether fecal transplant or engineered bacterial mixtures can restore healthy gut bacteria and reduce inflammation. The idea is to address underlying gut imbalance, not just suppress immune responses.
Stricture therapies
New drugs aim to prevent or reverse intestinal narrowing that currently requires surgery. Early trials are testing whether blocking specific fibrosis pathways can keep the bowel open.
What to know before you search
Eligibility typically depends on disease activity level, location of inflammation, prior treatment failures, and whether complications like strictures or fistulas are present.
What types of trials are currently open
- Induction and maintenance trials — Testing new biologics or small molecules to bring active Crohn's into remission and keep it there. Often compare against placebo or existing drugs like ustekinumab.
- Combination therapy trials — Testing whether combining two drugs works better than one, such as a biologic plus an immunomodulator or two biologics together.
- Fistula trials — Studies of treatments specifically for perianal fistulas, which are difficult to heal with standard Crohn's medications.
- Stricture trials — Testing drugs or procedures to prevent or treat intestinal narrowing without surgery.
- Long-term registry studies — Following people with Crohn's for years to track how disease behaves, what predicts complications, and how different treatments perform in real-world use.
Recently added Crohn's Disease trials
Take a targeted probiotic designed for bowel inflammation
Probiotics are live microorganisms that provide health benefits when consumed in sufficient amounts. Traditional probiotics, mainly from the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium genera, originate from fermented foods or the human gut and are widely used in supplements. Although considered safe and easy to produce, they are not specifically designed to treat diseases, and no official health claims have been approved by EFSA. Advances in microbiome research have led to the discovery of Next-Generation Probiotics (NGPs), which are newly identified gut microbes associated with health and offer promising therapeutic potential despite lacking a long history of safe use.
Donate a tissue sample to help validate a new bowel inflammation test
In view of the increasing evidence of the importance of mucosal healing as a combination of endoscopic and histologic healing, and the complexity and lack of complete agreement of the evaluation of histologic healing in IBD, the aim of this study will be to evaluate the accuracy of a new methodology, the immunostaining for Claudine 2 as compared to others standard well-accepted scoring for histologic activity in IBD. The aim is compare the accuracy of this methodology and in addition the correlation with outcomes (i.e. relapse, hospitalization, surgery).
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