Understanding the pathogenesis of psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, and autoimmunity via a fusion of molecular genetics and immunology

The goal of my laboratory is to understand the molecular genetics basis of the inflammatory skin disease psoriasis and associated psoriatic arthritis. In performing these studies my colleagues and I have begun to identify common pathways leading to autoimmunity as well, because some of the defective pathways leading to autoimmunity are the same in different autoimmune diseases. Some of these pathways are involved in determining the activation status of inflammatory cells in the resting state. Other pathways are likely to determine target organ specificity and will be unique to a particular disease. Our approaches rely on genetic studies with cases and families to identify the causative variants, and then functional studies to identify the role of these variants in the predisposition to psoriasis and autoimmunity. The advantage of genetics approaches to understanding diseases such as those of the immune system is that one can identify novel genes and pathways that were not previously suspected as being involved in either the immune system or tolerance.