The Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) has received a five year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases to study the development of psoriasis, and to evaluate molecules that have the potential to prevent psoriatic symptoms and that could be models for drug development.

Psoriasis is a chronic disease of the immune system typified by areas of skin thickening, scaling and cracking. Up to three percent of the world’s population is affected, and there is no cure for the lifelong condition, which can also involve painful psoriatic arthritis.

In this project, Dr. Hwang and his collaborators will investigate molecules that allow the movement of immune cells into the skin tissue when the skin is immunologically activated. He has previously shown that deletion of the gene for a chemokine receptor called CCR6, which works with a protein called CCL20, prevents the onset of psoriatic symptoms in mice.

Illustration from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,

Department of Health and Human Services

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