The skin is much more than the part of our body that gets sunburned in the summer and pasty in the winter: It is our largest organ and the barrier that separates us from the outside world, where we encounter thousands of allergens, irritants, pollutants, microbes and more on a daily basis. Persistent defects in the barrier can result in crippling conditions, but brief breaches may enable the delivery of lifesaving drugs, improve vaccine effectiveness and allow new ways to diagnose disease.
Given the skin barrier’s power to hurt and heal, researchers in the Department of Dermatology at the University of Rochester Medical Center are teaming up with specialists from across the University – experts in environmental medicine, vaccine biology, optics and engineering, to name a few – to form the Skin Barrier Research Consortium. The goal: discovering how the barrier works and ways in which we can manipulate it to improve our health.
Alice P. Pentland, M.D., James H. Sterner Professor and Chair of the Department of Dermatology and head of the new program, says, “The skin is where the action is. It is our first line of defense against everything we encounter in the environment and contains twice as many immune cells than any other place in the body.”
Researchers and clinicians will work to understand the factors necessary for a healthy skin barrier and characterize the skin barrier defects in the two most common inflammatory skin diseases – eczema and psoriasis – which Pentland’s team knows, firsthand, can be devastating for patients and families.