TARGET PharmaSolutions Announces Partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb to Advance Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Research

CHAPEL HILL, NC – December 3, 2018 /PR NEWSWIRE/ – TARGET PharmaSolutions, Inc., a company focused on real-world evidence, is pleased to announce that Bristol Myers Squibb has entered into a strategic partnership for TARGET-IBD.

TARGET-IBD is a longitudinal observational study that evaluates patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease, including adult and pediatric patients with ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease and indeterminate Colitis.   TARGET-IBD has enrolled over 1,850 patients to date at 30 investigative sites.  TARGET-IBD is led by an academic steering committee co-chaired by Bruce Sands, MD (Mount Sinai), David Rubin, MD (University of Chicago), and Millie Long, MD (University of North Carolina).

Dr. Millie Long explained, “TARGET-IBD continues to collect valuable real-world data which enhances our understanding of the natural history of inflammatory bowel disease and the impact of different treatment paradigms on patient populations over time. The outcomes from real-world evidence can help doctors as they work to provide treatments to individual patients in real-life settings. This is particularly important given the ongoing innovation in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease.”

Meg Powell, Pharm.D., CEO of TARGET PharmaSolutions, stated “TARGET-IBD continues to make tremendous progress by enrolling a diverse patient cohort – including adult and pediatric patients – from a network of academic and community sites.  The meticulously detailed real-world data it is collecting from these patients, such as severity of disease, is valuable for TARGET-IBD industry partners like BMS as they work to develop treatments to enhance patient outcomes.  Our partnership demonstrates a shared vision of advancing IBD research and builds on our current partnership with Bristol-Myers Squibb for TARGET-NASH and TARGET-HCC.”

The TARGET-IBD study design is disease focused, not treatment-specific, allowing for continuous acquisition of natural history and outcomes data, including patient reported outcomes (PROs), as new treatments continue to enter the market and clinical programs evolve.  It also includes a biorepository which its stakeholders can access for translational studies of viral resistance, genomics and biomarkers to further their research of inflammatory bowel disease.