Crohns & Colitis Foundation Perspectives

Vedolizumab as Induction and Maintenance Therapy for Crohn's Disease in Patients Naïve to or Who Have Failed Tumor Necrosis Factor Antagonist Therapy. Sands BE1, Sandborn WJ, Van Assche G, Lukas M, Xu J, James A, Abhyankar B, Lasch K. BACKGROUND: Vedolizumab is a gut-selective α4β7 integrin antagonist for the treatment of moderately to severely active Crohn's disease (CD). Aims of this study were to characterize the efficacy and safety of vedolizumab induction and maintenance therapy in patients who were naïve to tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) antagonist therapy (TNF-naïve) or who had discontinued TNF-α antagonist therapy because of inadequate response (i.e., primary nonresponse), loss of response, or intolerance (collectively classified as the TNF-failure population). METHODS: Post hoc analyses of the efficacy data for 516 TNF-naïve and 960 TNF-failure patients from the GEMINI 2 and GEMINI 3 trials were evaluated at weeks 6, 10, and 52 and included clinical remission (CD Activity Index [CDAI] score ≤150