This document proposes concentrating Asacol pills to improve treatment of Crohn's disease. Crohn's is an inflammatory bowel disease that affects the digestive tract. Asacol is currently used to treat it, but patients must take many pills per day to maintain effectiveness. The proposal aims to concentrate Asacol so that fewer pills, taken less frequently, can control symptoms. A study would observe mice receiving normal or concentrated Asacol to evaluate effects on symptoms and offspring. The expected results are that concentrated Asacol would improve rectal bleeding and stool frequency over the normal treatment, without harming offspring. This could help patients by reducing pill burden and costs of the treatment.

1. Concentrating Asacol for the improved treatment of Crohn’s disease Gustavo Perez Caballero

2. What is Crohn’s disease? It’s a form of inflammatory bowel disease. It usually affects the intestines, but may occur anywhere from the mouth to the end of the rectum.

3. What is the cause of Crohn’s? The exact cause is unknown. It’s linked to a problem with the body's immune system response. The result is an overactive immune response that leads to chronic inflammation.

4. What is Asacol? Asacol is an anti-inflammatory drug used to treat inflammation of the digestive tract ulcerative colitis and mild-to-moderate Crohn's disease. Asacolis a bowel-specific aminosalicylatedrug that acts locally in the gut and has its predominant actions there, thereby having few systemic side effects.

5. Asacol side-effects Commonly: Diarrhea, Nausea, Cramping, Flatulence. Uncommonly: Headache, Exacerbation of the colitis, Hypersensitivity reactions, Hair Loss, Interstitial nephritis. Rarely: Acute pancreatitis, Hepatitis, Nephrotic syndrome, Blood disorders.

6. Hypothesis That one of the concentrated Asacol pills will be enough to repress Crohn’s disease for the whole day.

7. Objectives To improve the Asacol pill so that it can be taken once daily or even once every 2 or 3 days. Currently a normal person has to take 6 pills of Asacol per day to allow it to be effective.

8. Objectives (cont.) The thing is most health insurance companies don’t cover the pill. For example a person whose insurance wont cover the treatment and has to take six pills a day must pay the hefty amount of 700 to 800 dollars every 4 to for 5 weeks. So this proposal will save people both time and money.

9. Methodology I will have my control group and my experimental group, control being 5 sets of 5 mice taking the normal Asacol treatment and my experimental being 5 sets of 5 mice taking the more concentrated type of Asacol. I will observe them over a period of time to watch for any side-effects and see if there are any effects on offspring. After which if there is no change in genes and presents no danger to humans I will test it on willing humans with the disease.

10. Expected Results After numerous observations I expect that the mice in the concentrated Asacol group show more improvement in rectal bleeding and stool frequency than in the normal treatment. I also expect that it wont damage the offspring in anyway so that I can test it on willing humans with the disease.

11. References 1. http://www.drugs.com/asacol.html Asacom,07/27/2010, Cerner Multum, Inc. ('Multum’) 2. http://www.medicinenet.com/crohns_disease/article.htm Jay W. Marks, MD,Crohn'sDisease, 12 Jul 1996 3. http://www.webmd.com/ibd-crohns-disease/crohns-disease/tc/crohns-disease-treatment-overview 2005-2011, WebMD,Healthwise 4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001295/ George F Longstreth, MD, Department of Gastroenterology, 12/13/2010, A.D.A.M., Inc.