Crohn’s MAP Vaccine is an awareness and support group comprised of members of the Crohn’s Community. Our mission is to find a cure for Crohn’s Disease. We believe the best hope for that cure lies in the Vaccine developed by Prof. Hermon-Taylor...

What is Crohn’s Disease?

Crohn’s Disease is a debilitating and aggressive form of Inflammatory Bowel Disease. It affects around 5 million worldwide, including 1.2 million in the USA and over 100,000 in the UK –and numbers are increasing, especially in children. Symptoms include chronic severe abdominal pain, weight loss, bloody diarrhoea and fatigue. Up to 80% of patients will need surgery at some point in their lifetime. There is currently no cure and the lives of most sufferers are blighted by multiple hospitalisations, surgeries, immunosuppressive therapies (and their side effects) and difficulty holding down a job or attending school. 

The Research: Professor John Hermon-Taylor (King’s College London) is an expert in Crohn’s Disease who has been researching its cause for over thirty years. He strongly believes that Crohn’s Disease is caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) – a distant cousin of Tuberculosis. Controversially, MAP is most commonly passed to humans through cow’s milk. Professor Hermon-Taylor has invented a modern therapeutic vaccine against MAP which he believes holds the best hope of a cure for Crohn’s that there has ever been. It is designed to stimulate the body’s own immune system to selectively eliminate MAP-infected cells. This vaccine is currently sitting in a freezer in a research institute, awaiting the funding to take it from the lab to the clinic.

Dr Burrill Crohn (1884-1983) himself, who gave his name to the disease, suspected that Crohn’s might have a mycobacterial cause -but he could not prove it with the scientific equipment of his era. Professor Hermon-Taylor has developed a new clinical test for MAP which is highly accurate and sensitive. Using this method, the detection rate of MAP in intestinal biopsies of people with Crohn’s disease is approaching 100%. Again, funding is required for further clinical validation studies. 

‘I've been researching MAP and its relationship to Crohn's Disease for over 30 years. On the basis of what I have seen I believe it to be the predominant cause of Crohn's disease. The anti-MAP vaccine we have developed is ready for manufacture. Animal studies in mice and in cattle have shown it to be highly effective against MAP with no obvious adverse effects. Now we need to spread the word, to raise awareness and the funding to go into production and start human trials.’ Prof. John Hermon-Taylor

If you support us, this is how your money would be spent:

Every £5000 enables the research team to pay for:

• 1 month’s salary of their excellent research scientist OR
• 2 month’s salary of a lab technician they would really like to appoint OR
• 3 months worth of reagents and laboratory consumables OR
• Open access to core scientific facilities such as super-resolution microscopy, advanced laser-capture microdissection, flow cytometry, proteomics and genomics and advanced image analysis software.

In other words, your money would go directly to the research itself. There are NO ADMINISTRATION COSTS as these are funded by the University, not the Crohn’s Fund. 

Together we can make this happen!