U researchers have helped find three new genetic “hotspots” that could be important in treating a painful disease that leaves scaly marks on the skin.
They used a new technique to study more than 400,000 genes found to be associated with psoriasis, a disease affecting about 7.5 million people in the United States.
Gerald Krueger, a dermatology professor at the U School of Medicine, and other U researchers worked with dermatology experts from the University of Michigan to identify potential genes that could play a role in skin mutations.
“This is going to generate a future of new targets for what could be triggering the disease,” Krueger said. “We’ve done this before at a smaller scale but none at this magnitude.”
Krueger and another dermatology professor at the U, Kristina Callis, have been accumulating data for the Utah Psoriasis Initiative, which they started years ago to find patients with the disease. James Elder, lead investigator of the study and a dermatology researcher from the University of Michigan, contacted Krueger to participate in a new study to test DNA in patients with the disease and a control group to find potential genes for treatment.
Researchers started with a study of nearly 3,000 patients that expanded to more than 10,000, which helped them confirm four important genes and find three new ones that could lead to psoriasis treatments.
Krueger, Callis and the Celera Genomics Group, a research team that looks for treatments to diseases, originally found the four confirmed genes. They published a study in 2007 showing how the genes had a strong association with the disease and could be studied for possible treatment.
Callis said there is a drug treatment ready for one of the targets. The researchers are hoping to receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration by the end of the year.
Krueger said the recent study was able to search through thousands of possible genes, but there are still about 10 million genes that could be associated with the disease.
“So far, the way we’ve gone hunting for diseases, you get a clue and go chasing,” Krueger said. “This version is like an atom bomb versus a rifle. You take this bomb, throw it out there and find 10,000 animals dead to look through and find the most likely ones associated with a red feather. We find the ones with a red feather and study them, instead of searching gene by gene.”
The research team was part of five other groups funded by the National Institutes of Health to study different diseases. Krueger said 33 teams submitted proposals for the grants and six were funded.
“Of the six that were chosen, it’s clear psoriasis has been (very) informative,” Krueger said.
The data will help other researchers test the possible targets, and confirms that the new technique works to sort through large amounts of potential genes.
The National Psoriasis Foundation helped researchers collect data by providing samples. Researchers with the foundation said they were impressed with the results of the study.
“It’s a great paper. They had more than 5,000 patients in the follow-up study,” said Bruce Bebo, director of research and medical programs for the foundation. “However, there’s a lot more to do. You need more samples, more numbers (for further research).”
Krueger is already in the process of studying other targets. He said they are waiting for sample data from researchers in France to begin tests. One of the problems they find studying the disease is that many patients react differently to treatments, especially at different stages in their lives.
For some pregnant women, the scaly disease vanishes and then reappears after they give birth.
“We have 1,006 enrolled in the Utah Psoriasis Initiative,” Krueger said. “As soon as we get material back…in May of this year, we’ll start doing tests.”