Tracells Presents New Data at UEG Week 2025: Fecal Transcriptomics Mirrors Endoscopic Inflammation in IBD

We’re pleased to share our latest findings, presented this week at UEG Week 2025, demonstrating that Fecal Host Transcriptomics (FHT) can accurately and non-invasively capture intestinal inflammation in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

In this study, 82 home-collected stool samples were analyzed using a sequencing workflow adapted from single-cell RNA-seq. The resulting host transcriptomic profiles provided detailed molecular readouts of both inflammation status and location.

Unsupervised clustering of 200 gene features clearly separated patients in active disease versus remission, achieving 93% accuracy (AUC = 0.97). A complementary location model differentiated colonic from small-bowel inflammation with AUC = 0.92, 94% sensitivity, and 85% specificity.

For comparison, the widely used fecal calprotectin test reached an AUC of 0.72 for detecting inflammation in the same cohort. This highlights the added value of a transcriptomic approach that integrates hundreds of molecular biomarkers, offering a more complete view of mucosal biology than any single marker alone.

These results demonstrate that fecal transcriptomics can reflect intestinal health as accurately as an endoscopic exam—and sometimes with even greater sensitivity. The ability to obtain this information from a simple, home-collected sample could transform how IBD is monitored, reducing the need for invasive procedures while empowering both patients and clinicians with real-time insight.

We thank our collaborators at Soroka University Medical Center, Schneider Children’s Medical Center, and the Weizmann Institute of Science for their partnership in this work.