Inflammatory bowel diseases, generally classified as Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, are characterized by chronic intestinal inflammation and increased morbidity. Recent evidence suggests that a defective immune response plays a significant role in their etiology. In addition, other factors may be involved, such as epigenetics, genetics, microbiome, nutritional, and environmental factors.

All of these discoveries have had an impact on how we understand this immune-mediated disease, and may help to improve clinical management and patient quality of life in the near future. The "bench to bedside and back to bench" philosophy has greatly contributed to pursue this purpose.

This Special Issue will emphasize translational research that is directly related to patient care. We invite researchers to contribute original research and review articles that deal with inflammatory bowel diseases at their molecular basis aiming at better diagnosis, prognosis and treatment.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Disease etiology
• Biomarkers for diagnosis
• Biological onset of disease and pre-clinical stage
• The role of mesenteric adipose tissue in Crohn’s disease
• Intestinal fibrosis and the inflammatory process
• Biomarkers for follow-up, disease prognosis and postoperative outcomes
• Molecular targets for novel treatments
• Nutritional aspects for clinical intervention
• Molecular biomarkers and correlation with endoscopic and imaging scores
• Technical issues in endoscopic diagnosis (including capsule endoscopy)
• Treatment of stricture by endoscopy (device-assisted enteroscopy)
• Therapeutic drug monitoring
• Assessment and management of extraintestinal manifestations
• Emerging stem cell-based therapeutics
• Ulcerative colitis and pouchitis
• Fecal microbiota transplant