Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Psoriasis is a common skin disease that causes thick, itchy, red patches with a silvery white build-up of dead skin called 'plaques'. Around one million Canadians are currently living with psoriasis. This long-lasting condition can seriously impact a person's overall quality of life as it is linked to social humiliation, psychological distress, physical disability, pain and increased health risks. Unfortunately, current therapies often have negative side-effects and fail to provide long-term symptom relief. For these reasons, it is very important to further understand how psoriasis occurs. With this knowledge, we can develop more effective and better targeted treatments. A family of proteins called granzymes are found in drastically high levels in many inflammatory skin diseases. One granzyme, called Granzyme K (GzmK), has recently been shown to promote inflammation in diseases with characteristics similar to psoriasis. However, the role of GzmK in psoriasis is currently unknown. As our recent data suggest that amounts of GzmK are high in psoriasis, I believe this protein could play a key role in this condition. To better understand the role of GzmK in psoriasis, I will use a combination of human, mouse and human skin cell models of disease. First, I will determine what cells release GzmK in human psoriasis samples. Next, I will assess whether GzmK contributes to psoriasis using a mouse model in which GzmK is not present. Finally, I will use human skin cells to study how GzmK contributes to psoriasis. Overall, this study will improve our understanding of the role of GzmK in psoriasis which may help support the development of new drugs to treat this disease for the benefit of Canadians and the 125 million people worldwide currently living with psoriasis.