Dr Regueiro recaps the results from the pivotal study comparing the effects of risankizumab with ustekinumab on key biomarkers of inflammatory bowel disease, which he presented at Digestive Disease Week 2024.

Miguel Regueiro, MD, is professor of medicine and chair of the Digestive Disease Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. 

TRANSCRIPT: 

I'm Dr. Miguel Regueiro. I'm the chief of the Digestive Disease Institute and professor of medicine at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. I was a coauthor on the SEQUENCE study that was presented at DDW. Some of you may be familiar with the SEQUENCE study, but just to give you a background on the study and then get into what we actually researched and was presented at DDW 2024. The SEQUENCE study was the first head-to-head study looking at risankizumab, which is an anti-IL-23 medication, compared with ustekinumab, which is an anti-IL12/23 medication. And what the study had shown and previously was reported was that risankizumab met all of the primary and secondary endpoints for noninferiority and superiority over ustekinumab.

The study we presented at DDW 2024 was looking at biomarkers, C-reactive protein and fecal calprotectin. And the bottom line and the take-home from the study was that the biomarker reduction, CRP at baseline, fecal calprotectin at baseline, both of which were elevated, came down more significantly in the risankizumab group compared with the ustekinumab group, which means that we're seeing an improvement in the biomarker inflammatory response of risankizumab at a higher rate than we saw with ustekinumab.

So this is further evidence and data from this important and pivotal sequence study that risankizumab does have superiority over ustekinumab for the treatment of Crohn's disease, but more specifically what we found is significant declines in fecal calprotectin and CRP with risankizumab.

So I think more and more as we look at our different treatments, we are favoring risankizumab treatment for the patients who have Crohn's disease and monitoring with CRP and fecal calprotectin.