Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Millions of people worldwide suffer from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). This chronic condition causes pain, diarrhea, fatigue, and weight loss, reducing an individual's quality of life. Unfortunately, abdominal pain in IBD remains a debilitating, recurrent and unresolved problem. The millions of bacteria residing in the gut, termed the gut microbiota, contribute to digestion, immune responses, and mental health. IBD has been linked to an altered gut microbiota. This proposal takes a novel approach to treating pain in IBD by examining if the bacteria that reside in the gut modulate IBD pain. Patients with IBD tend to have an imbalance of proteases, enzymes that break down proteins in our gut to help our body function properly. My preliminary research has found that IBD patient microbiota samples from their stool contain pain-causing proteases. Some bacteria that live in our gut produce proteases, and some studies now link specific bacteria to IBD. Accordingly, we will determine whether protease secretion from bacteria associated with IBD can increase pain in the gut using mouse models of abdominal pain signalling. Furthermore, we will investigate if inflammation triggers bacteria to produce more proteases than in the absence of inflammation and if this worsens pain in the gut. Our work will elucidate the role that specific bacteria and their proteases play in IBD-related pain. This will lay the groundwork for a novel microbial therapy that is more targeted and safer than existing opioid pain medications to reduce abdominal pain and improve the quality of life of IBD patients.