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inflammatory bowel disease

Gastroenterology

Expanding to Improve Patient Care

To improve patient care, the Children’s Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition has added six new faculty members.

When Sandeep Gupta, M.D., arrived at Children’s of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) as chief of the Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition in 2023, he immediately recognized the need for expansion. So, not long after his arrival, he embarked on the mission to grow his team. Within the last year-and-a-half, he has welcomed six new faculty, and they’re already making a difference in the way the division serves its patients.

For Gupta, that was the objective—providing better patient care. It’s a large undertaking considering Children’s massive catchment area—the entire state of Alabama along with surrounding states. “Every disease state we have is in the hundreds,” he said. “And the doctors we had in those areas were just one or two.”

Intestinal rehabilitation, or ‘short gut,’ is a good example. It’s a complex issue affecting more than 160 of the team’s patients. But previously, only one doctor was available to serve them. With inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the team had two doctors for more than 400 patients. The math was similar for patients with liver issues. “There was such a need to bring [new hires] in to just serve what we have,” Gupta said. “We were simply to trying keep our heads above water.”

To address these issues, Gupta began the process of expanding the division in September 2024, making all of the new hires over the course of the next year. In the case of IBD, the expansion was transformative. That group now has two new clinicians, Rahmath Althaf, M.D., and Maggie Vickers, M.D., and a basic scientist, Babajide Ojo, Ph.D. “Now, what we have is basically a team that goes from bench to bedside,” Gupta said. “We are starting studies where we are collecting samples from patients in the clinic, and then [Ojo] is processing these in the lab to do the studies. And with the discoveries he will make, we can then bring the knowledge back to the bedside.”

It’s an “ecosystem” that Gupta believes has not existed in gastroenterology at Children’s. The team has study coordinators and is part of national consortia. “So basically, we are creating a self-dependent and interdependent team of itself that can grow on its own,” he said.

Gupta aspires to create the same setup for intestinal rehabilitation. In the meantime, care is already improving. With Sirine Belaid, M.D., joining the team, the division now has two doctors to treat these patients, allowing them to see inpatients twice each week instead of once. “So now we are able to better serve the people more intentionally, more mindfully,” Gupta said.

Gupta also added liver doctors in David Willcutts, M.D., and Stephanie Saaybi, M.D., who “will helps us grow the liver team further,” he said.

Perhaps the most salient sign of the team’s success so far is this: patients who once had no choice but to go hundreds of miles away for treatment are now able to stay in Alabama for their care. “They are now being sent back to us by the doctors, who are saying, ‘Hey, UAB has a great program—go back there, you don’t need to come see us anymore,’” Gupta said. “So that has been very fulfilling that people are recognizing we are ace-ing our game here.”

With changes of this magnitude, Gupta believes the division can start to move from excellence to eminence, which was another of his goals when he first arrived.

New hires since September 2024

Rahmath Althaf, D.O., an assistant professor, earned her medical degree from the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine. She completed her residency in general pediatrics at the Medical College of Georgia and her pediatric gastroenterology fellowship at UAB. Her research and clinical interests include IBD and intestinal ultrasound.

Sirine Belaid, M.D., an assistant professor, earned her medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh. She completed her residency in general pediatrics at the University of Iowa Stead Family’s Children’s Hospital and her pediatric gastroenterology fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Babajide Ojo, Ph.D., an assistant professor, earned his doctoral degree in nutritional sciences from Oklahoma State University. He completed his postdoctoral research at Stanford University School of Medicine. He received the NIH MOSAIC K99/R00 award in 2023. His research interests include using patient-derived intestinal organoids and murine models to determine how the environment (dietary components, therapies) shapes epithelial metabolism and differentiation in intestinal health and inflammatory bowel diseases.

Stephanie Saaybi, M.D., an assistant professor, earned her medical degree from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. She completed her residency in general pediatrics at MedStar Georgetown University and her pediatric gastroenterology fellowship at UAB. She completed an additional fellowship in pediatric advanced hepatology and liver transplant at Northwestern University.

Maggie Vickers, M.D., an assistant professor, earned her medical degree from UAB. She completed her residency in general pediatrics and her pediatric gastroenterology fellowship at the Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Regional One Health. Her clinical interests include general gastroenterology, nutrition and inflammatory bowel disease.

David Willcutts, M.D., an assistant professor, earned his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where he also completed his residency in pediatrics and his pediatric gastroenterology fellowship. He completed an additional fellowship in pediatric advanced hepatology and liver transplant at the University of Colorado.

February 17, 2026 by
Gastroenterology

A high-tech approach to improving IBD treatment

When Children’s of Alabama associate scientist Babajide Ojo, MS, Ph.D., was completing his doctoral degree at Oklahoma State University, one of his peers had a child with Crohn’s disease. Ojo was so struck by the burden of the condition and its treatment on the child and his classmate—who eventually had to drop out of the program—that he decided his research must focus on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which includes Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis.

“I realized there were ways to manage the disease but no cure, so I thought it could be a great opportunity to contribute to this field and find better ways to treat it,” said Ojo, who’s also an assistant professor of pediatrics in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

Five years later—and a year after he arrived at Children’s—Ojo has already made an impact, using a newer, high-tech method to tease apart why IBD starts and what makes it flare in hopes of optimizing ways to control it. While most IBD treatments concentrate on calming the immune system, they don’t often lead to long-term remission, especially in children. So Ojo and his colleagues are looking at a different piece of the puzzle: the epithelium, or lining of the gut, which is important in IBD but often overlooked in research.

“The field right now solely focuses on the immune component of the disease,” he said. “But the data indicates that a lot of patients lose response to medications over time. For us, I think focusing on the epithelium may help us discover a kind of treatment that can elongate remission in these patients.”

Ojo is using a cutting-edge approach called patient biopsy-derived organoids—tiny 3D models grown from patient tissue—to watch how gut stem cells grow and become different kinds of cells that comprise the gut lining. By doing this, he hopes to understand how this process differs in people with IBD.

“Among the models we have, organoids may be one of the perfect ones to study the epithelium,” Ojo said, noting that few other pediatric centers use human-derived organoids for research. “Because each one represents the molecular features of each patient, it may be a way of developing personalized treatments.”

Based on his organoid research, Ojo and his colleagues published findings in December 2025 in Nature Communications suggesting that blocking a key fat-control protein helped epithelium cells in children with ulcerative colitis to burn energy more normally, reduce stress and calm inflammation. The results indicate that fat metabolism problems in colon cells are a major contributor to ulcerative colitis, potentially pointing toward new treatment approaches.

By identifying epithelial-specific “control points” central to IBD, Ojo hopes therapies can be developed that, if they don’t work for all patients, could be used specifically in pediatric patients.

“This may supplement some of the immunotherapies on the market to help us help them achieve long-term remission,” he said. “If we don’t improve how we treat patients, IBD is really a lifelong disease. We hope to make it much more manageable and reduce their constant visits to clinic, if not eliminate them totally.”

February 12, 2026 by
Gastroenterology

Improving Inflammatory Bowel Disease Care

Children’s of Alabama and the Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham are embarking on five-year study with the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation.

In an effort to confront the challenges faced by patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation recently received a transformative grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This comprehensive five-year project marks a pivotal collaboration with Children’s of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), targeting the identification and resolution of barriers hindering the diagnosis and care of individuals affected by IBD.

Traci Jester, M.D., associate professor of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at UAB, is a project co-investigator. The project holds promise in transforming the approach to IBD management. The grant encompasses a three-part strategy; the first phase involves patient recruitment at both the Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinic at Children’s and the UAB Gastroenterology Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinic.

The study aims to comprehensively address barriers to timely diagnosis and care through data collection initiatives. The initial phase involves survey-based assessments covering a variety of factors such as psychological resilience, socio-economic status and healthcare access. Then, patient-centric focus groups comprised of a cohort of patients from the initial phase of the study will delve deeper into the challenges faced and identify potential solutions.

As the study unfolds over its five-year span, the final phase will focus on developing and testing strategic interventions. These interventions aim to bridge the gaps in disease awareness among the public and specific demographics while also focusing on educating primary care providers to ensure timely referrals to specialists.

The choice of UAB as the collaboration site for this groundbreaking study stems from its robust research infrastructure, diverse patient population and track record of successfully investigating health disparities across various medical fields. This partnership builds on previous collaborations, signifying a shared commitment to improving patient care and advancing IBD research.

IBD encompasses chronic inflammatory conditions affecting various sections of the gastrointestinal tract. Both Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, two well-known inflammatory bowel conditions, affect large numbers of children throughout the country. Jester highlighted that while Crohn’s disease can impact any part of the gastrointestinal tract, ulcerative colitis typically involves inflammation in the colon.

“Both adults and children can be diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease, but the incidence in diagnosis is actually rising in the pediatric population,” Jester said. “We’re seeing younger and younger patients being diagnosed—roughly 25% of all patients with inflammatory bowel disease are identified before the age of 18.”

One of the primary barriers to prompt diagnosis and treatment revolves around a lack of awareness among both patients and health care providers regarding the prevalence and symptoms of IBD. Jester explained how this can lead to delayed referrals and inadequate support for patients, compounded by socioeconomic factors like transportation issues and limited resources.

Jester expressed enthusiasm for this pivotal project and its potential to enhance care for all patients affected by IBD. The collaboration between UAB, Children’s and the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation reflects a concerted effort to create tangible improvements in disease management and patient outcomes.

“We’re very excited about this project here at UAB and partnering with such a national organization as the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation,” Jester said. “We’re very much looking forward to improving care for all of our patients.”

January 26, 2024 by