Inflammatory Disorders
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD)
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a chronic relapsing and remitting inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract that afflicts millions of people in the United States and throughout the world. IBD can take the form of either Crohn's disease, characterized by mucosal ulcerations that penetrate deeply into the walls of the small intestine and colon, or ulcerative colitis, in which inflammation is restricted to the large intestine. IBD patients suffer considerable lifestyle disruption and personal and professional disability from this disease related to severe diarrhea, abdominal pain and anemia. In addition, patients with a long-term history of ulcerative colitis have an increased risk of colon cancer.
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Multiple Sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a debilitating chronic inflammatory disease that affects the central nervous system. Current reasearch suggests that the illness is initiated by an autoimmune malfunction, where the body incorrectly directs certain leukocytes against proteins in the protective myelin sheath surrounding nerves in the brain and spinal cord. The result is multiple areas of scarring or sclerosis. Eventually, progressive damage can obliterate the nerve signals that control muscle coordination, strength, sensation and even vision.
MS affects more than 1 million people worldwide, and this includes more than twice as many women as men. The disease course is unpredictable and varies widely in severity, but in many patients it results in permanent disability. Current treatments can only modify the course of the disease and may partially relieve some of the lesser symptoms. The recent appreciation that the effector cells in MS are inapproriately directed leukocytes has allowed ChemoCentryx to focus our new therapies on blocking chemokine receptors involved early in the recruitment process prior to the destruction of the myelin sheath.
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