New approaches to treat inflammatory diseases

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that affects approximately 2% of the population.

In 1994, we identified VEGF-A as the major factor responsible for the vascular pathology of psoriasis. More recently, we found that VEGF-A overexpressing transgenic mice are unable to downregulate experimentally induced inflammation and that they develop a chronic inflammatory disease that almost completely resembles human psoriasis, therefore representing a new in vivo model for this disease.

We also found that blockade of VEGF-A signaling potently inhibited inflammation. These findings have stimulated developments by the pharmaceutical industry to develop anti-VEGF therapies for human psoriasis and other inflammatory diseases, and our ongoing research aims to take advantage of this disease model for further elucidate the molecular mechanisms of chronic inflammation and to identify new anti-inflammatory drugs.