Project description
Biomarkers to diagnose skin lesions that predict arthritis
The body's ability to fight disease relies on its immune system, and that includes the skin and mucous membranes which act as a protective barrier against the outside world. Increasing evidence points to the important interrelationship between immunity and inflammation. Psoriatic arthritis is just one such example: it is one of the most common types of autoimmune arthritis and a prototype inflammatory disease. Despite beginning as psoriasis (also an immune-mediated disease), this initial phase does not always lead to inflammation of joints and tendons - and the reasons are not known. The EU-funded BARRIER BREAK project is studying the spread of the disease to musculoskeletal regions in a novel model of psoriatic arthritis, on the trail of biomarkers for early diagnosis and treatment.
Objective
Physical barriers of the body and their immunological dysregulation are connected to a variety of inflammatory diseases and therefore an emerging area of interest in medicine. The gut and its microbiome gained center stage, whereas the skin as large primary immunological barrier to the environment is still less appreciated. Psoriatic arthritis (PsA) is a prototypic inflammatory disease which usually starts with skin lesions, before spreading to the musculoskeletal regions. To date, it is still obscure why the inflammatory process in some patients with psoriasis is restrained to the skin, whereas in other patients it extends to tendons and joints. Moreover, disease spreading to the joints associates with local tissue remodelling as evidenced by new bone formation at the insertion site of tendons into the bones. The molecular and cellular regulation of this “skin-joint axis” leading to development of PsA is still unclear but essential to understand organ communication in inflammatory diseases, the identification of potential biomarkers for early recognition of the disease and the development of preventive treatments. We will take advantage of a new model resembling PsA, which was established in our lab, with the aim of (1) studying disease spreading from the skin to musculoskeletal regions, (2) deciphering the molecular mechanisms that lead to uncontrolled local tissue remodeling, and finally (3) testing a new translational approach to prevent spreading of inflammation and tissue remodelling. We plan to adopt cutting-edge techniques to achieve our goals, which in turn will contribute to a better knowledge of the connection between epithelial surfaces and inflammation.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinerheumatology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiology
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Funding Scheme
ERC-STG - Starting GrantHost institution
91054 Erlangen
Germany