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Ulcerative colitis (UC) carries a significant, progressive disease burden that is often underestimated or misinterpreted by healthcare providers. Adverse outcomes have a major impact on patient quality of life, with a significant burden of symptoms both during and between inflammation flares. Chronic, uncontrolled disease leads to epithelial fibrosis and ‘lead pipe’ colon, dysplasia, and potential colonic cancer. Healthcare providers and patients share similar treatment goals, even if these are not verbalised in the same way, and clinicians need to fully understand the issues most important to patients. Understanding and collaboration can improve identification of meaningful treatment goals and overall disease management. In real-world practice, patients should be categorised according to disease characteristics and prognosis, and managed with appropriate, optimised therapies. Early, top-down management should be implemented in high-risk patients and all patient-centric therapeutic decisions made within the context of a full benefit/risk assessment.

Despite major advances in the inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) treatment landscape, the management of ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD) continues to pose challenges. There is significant scope to optimise treatment of IBD, and conventional therapies may fail to meet evolving treatment goals. Induction of remission with clinical control of symptoms and maintenance of remission with long-term prevention of disease progression are important considerations for healthcare professionals. The concept of complete remission integrates clinical remission, patient-reported outcomes, and mucosal healing, a key therapeutic goal for disease modification. The anti-integrin vedolizumab has been proven to be effective in inducing and maintaining clinical remission in IBD, both first-line and in tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα)-experienced patients, and has demonstrated mucosal healing benefits in UC patients. Safety remains critical for all therapies and vedolizumab is generally well-tolerated across all age groups, including the elderly. Real-world experience with vedolizumab has shown broadly comparable outcomes to the pivotal clinical trials.

The importance of the gut microbiota to health is becoming more widely appreciated. The range of commensal microorganisms in healthy individuals and in patients with a variety of digestive diseases is under active investigation, and evidence is accumulating to suggest that both the diversity and balance of bacterial species are important for health. Disturbance of the balance of microorganisms – dysbiosis – is associated with obesity and a variety of diseases. Restoring the balance by modulating the microbiota through diet, probiotics, or drugs is now being developed as a potential treatment for digestive diseases. Rifaximin has been shown to increase levels of beneficial bacterial species without perturbing the overall composition of the microbiota in patients with a variety of digestive diseases, making it a ‘eubiotic’ rather than an antibiotic. Rifaximin has demonstrated clinical benefit in the treatment of symptomatic uncomplicated diverticular disease, where changes in the colonic microbiota contribute to the pathogenesis of this disease. Modulating the microbiota is also a promising treatment for some types of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) that have been linked to an overgrowth of coliform and Aeromonas species in the small intestine. Rifaximin has demonstrated efficacy in relieving symptoms and reducing relapses in diarrhoeal IBS in the TARGET-1, 2, and 3 trials, without reducing microbial diversity or increasing antimicrobial resistance. While many aspects of the balance of gut microbiota in disease are not yet fully understood, the new understanding of rifaximin as a modulator of gut microbiota may open up new treatment options in digestive disease.

This symposium provided an opportunity for global experts to discuss the challenges posed by the introduction of biosimilars. The impact of the manufacturing process on clinical outcomes, maintaining treatment responses over the long term, and issues surrounding patient management in a changing environment were addressed. The symposium was opened by Prof Panaccione describing the evolution of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) treatment in the last 20 years and how biologics have improved outcomes. Prof D’Haens provided an explanation of the complexity surrounding biologic drug development and the hurdles facing drug manufacturers when ensuring high quality and consistently performing products over time. Prof Panaccione discussed the clinical challenges in balancing the transition from induction to maintenance therapy in order to provide a clinically relevant and sustained response to therapy. He also discussed the evidence for long-term outcomes with adalimumab for IBD. Prof Feagan highlighted the issues faced by clinicians treating patients with biologics, including the ability to switch between biologics without loss of efficacy or impact on safety, and the need to consider interchangeability between biologic therapies and the potential risk and impact of immunogenicity.