DocTIS study draws strong interest at UEG Week 2025
The DocTIS project had a notable presence at this year’s United European Gastroenterology Week (UEG Week), held from October 4 to 7 in Berlin. Professor Britta Siegmund, Principal Investigator of DocTIS at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, presented the study “DocTIS: A Single-Cell RNA-seq Atlas of Drug Response to Targeted Therapies in Immune-Mediated Inflammatory Diseases” to an audience of around 200 participants.
The presentation generated lively discussion and engagement, reflecting the scientific community’s growing interest in the DocTIS findings and their relevance to precision medicine in immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs).
Breakthrough insights into immune and drug-response mechanisms
The DocTIS study provides the first large-scale single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-Seq) analysis of drug responses across six prevalent IMIDs: psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus.
Analysing more than two million peripheral immune cells from 176 patients, the study revealed major inter-disease differences in immune composition and gene regulation. Notably, it uncovered:
- Distinct immune cell signatures differentiating the six IMIDs at both compositional and transcriptional levels.
- Novel regulatory mechanisms in B and CD14+ monocyte compartments distinguishing ulcerative colitis from Crohn’s disease.
- Drug-specific immune effects, providing molecular insights into the variability of patient responses to targeted therapies.
These results form a comprehensive single-cell atlas of drug response and disease heterogeneity, offering a valuable resource for understanding treatment outcomes and supporting the development of more effective therapeutic strategies.
The study was developed by the scientific partners of the DocTIS project: Vall d’Hebron Research Institute, VHIR (Sara Marsal), Cardiff University (Ernest Choy), the University of Verona (Giampiero Girolomoni), Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Britta Siegmund), the Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer, IDIBAPS (Pere Santamaria), the National Center for Genomic Analysis, CNAG (Holger Heyn), IMIDomics Inc. (Manuel Lopez-Figueroa), and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology (Richard M. Myers),. It was carried out in collaboration with a large network of hospitals in Spain through the IMID Consortium, providing access to diverse patient cohorts and robust clinical data.
In addition to presenting the DocTIS findings, Professor Siegmund actively contributed to several sessions during the congress. She delivered the talk “How to boost your biology? Everyday strategies to improve therapies and combinations” within the session “How to optimise success in IBD treatment”, and co-chaired key sessions such as “Late-breaking trials in IBD”, “Focus on fistulising Crohn’s disease”, and “When IBD and IBS experts collaborate for optimal diagnosis and treatment of IBD with IBS-like symptoms”.
About UEG Week
UEG Week is Europe’s leading event in gastroenterology and digestive health. The 2025 edition gathered more than 12,200 registrants, featured 4,168 abstracts and included participants from 115 countries, reaffirming its position as a global hub for scientific exchange and collaboration.
The participation of DocTIS at UEG Week 2025 highlights the project’s continued contribution to advancing the understanding of immune-mediated inflammatory diseases and optimizing targeted therapies for patients.
