Myka Labs announced today that the latest results of research on its innovative new approach to treating stricture, a serious complication of Crohn’s disease experienced by nearly every Crohn’s patient, will be presented at the upcoming 2023 Crohn’s and Colitis Congress.
The new approach to treating stricture is being developed by a Myka Labs-led team that also includes leading Crohn’s/IBD researchers from ISCARE and the University of California at San Francisco.
The significant contribution of fibrosis in many Crohn’s strictures is a barrier to durable stricture resolution. While less-invasive interventions like balloon dilation and enteral stent placement can offer transient relief of stricture symptoms, many Crohn’s patients with strictures currently progress to requiring major surgery.
The new approach being pioneered by the Myka Labs team, known as longitudinal compression therapy, is designed to durably resolve strictures without surgery. It entails endoscopically placing a specialized dual-flange semi-collapsible device system within and around a strictured segment and using the device system to endoluminally compress the strictured segment along its length–longitudinally–over a period of several days, with the goal of excising core fibrotic tissue while simultaneously spurring peripheral healing.
Arrays of ultraminiature sensors incorporated into the device components used in the study allowed the research team to precisely characterize the stricture response to therapy. The study is the first long-term follow-up of longitudinal compression therapy (LCT) in a validated animal model of Crohn’s stricture and provides strong preliminary support that LCT’s combination of resection and neo-epithelialization can durably resolve Crohn’s disease stricture.
Presenting for the Myka Labs team at the Congress will be co-author and Myka Labs Scientific Advisory Board Member Dr. Barry Salky, a longtime leader in the field of Crohn’s patient care. The lead authors on the paper are Dr. Caressa Chen from UCSF Surgical Innovations and Dr. Juan Verde from the Institute for Image Guided Surgery in Strasbourg, France. Dr. Chen and Dr. Verde contributed equally on the work.