Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Feb 21, 2023; 29(7): 1157-1172
Published online Feb 21, 2023. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v29.i7.1157
Mucosal healing and inflammatory bowel disease: Therapeutic implications and new targets
Megan Lynn Otte, Raju Lama Tamang, Julia Papapanagiotou, Rizwan Ahmad, Punita Dhawan, Amar B Singh
Megan Lynn Otte, Department of Pathology and Microbiology, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE 68198, United States
Raju Lama Tamang, Julia Papapanagiotou, Rizwan Ahmad, Punita Dhawan, Amar B Singh, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE 68198, United States
Author contributions: Otte ML, Lama Tamang R, Papapanagiotou J, and Ahmad R reviewed literature for the latest advances in the field; Otte ML, Lama Tamang R, Papapanagiotou J, Ahmad R, Dhawan P, and Singh AB wrote and revised this paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Amar B Singh, PhD, Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Nebraska Medical Center, 600 42nd Dewey, Omaha, NE 68118, United States. amar.singh@unmc.edu
Received: October 21, 2022
Peer-review started: October 21, 2022
First decision: November 30, 2022
Revised: December 16, 2022
Accepted: February 14, 2023
Article in press: February 14, 2023
Published online: February 21, 2023
Processing time: 122 Days and 10.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Mucosal healing (MH) is vital in maintaining intestinal homeostasis and protecting against infection and injury. MH has emerged as an important clinical criterion in effective treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). However, there remains a relative lack of therapeutics that can restore MH due to the complexity of the disease and healing processes. Through increased understanding of the molecular mechanisms of MH, tissue damage from IBD may be ameliorated by developing novel therapeutics. Here, we introduce the concept of MH and its relevance in IBD, and discuss the mechanisms of IBD and potential strategies for altering these processes for inducing MH.