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Alumni Connections: Ben Pham '23 on Crohn's disease research and life after Carleton
This reports preclinical Crohn’s disease research linking creeping fat to intestinal scarring and the creation of a mouse model to study fibrosis and test interventions — an early step toward therapies for strictures.
Patients and caregivers concerned about Crohn’s-related strictures/fibrosis, researchers in IBD mechanisms and drug discovery, and students/alumni interested in translational research.
What To Know
What to know This alumni profile describes Ben Pham ’23 joining a Stanford lab that studied mechanisms of Crohn’s disease.
The team looked at “creeping fat” (abnormal fatty tissue) and its role in intestinal scarring and fibrosis, developed a surgical mouse model of intestinal fibrosis to reproduce a stricture-like phenotype, and plans to use that model to test interventions aimed at treating strictures.
Pham’s role included learning wet-lab techniques and bioinformatics while contributing to the final two years of a five-year study. The piece emphasizes the move from mechanism discovery toward testing potential treatments using the new mouse model.
Why this matters This research is relevant because it investigates a specific mechanism (creeping fat) that may contribute to intestinal scarring and strictures in Crohn’s disease and describes a preclinical mouse model being used to test possible interventions.
That’s an early step toward treatments for fibrosis-related complications, not an immediate therapy change. Who should pay attention Patients and caregivers interested in Crohn’s disease complications (strictures/fibrosis), researchers studying IBD mechanisms or preclinical models, and alumni or students interested in translational research.
More context This is a profile-style summary of lab work; it does not present trial results or clinical recommendations. The article references a completed multi-year research project and plans to test interventions in a mouse model — preclinical work that requires further validation before human therapies are developed.
For more scientific detail, the article points to the Stanford research page mentioned in the story.
The article is an alumni profile summarizing a lab’s multi-year study and future preclinical work; it is not a clinical trial or treatment guideline. Outcomes and therapeutic implications remain preliminary and will require further research.
