Type I Interferon: Potential Therapeutic Target for Psoriasis?

We observed robust overexpression of type I interferon (IFN)–inducible genes and genomic signatures that indicate T cell and dendritic cell infiltration in lesional skin. Up-regulation of mRNAs for IFN-a subtypes was observed in lesional skin compared with nonlesional skin. Enrichment of mature dendritic cells and 2 type I IFN–inducible proteins, STAT1 and ISG15, were observed in the majority of lesional skin biopsies. Concordant overexpression of IFN-c and TNF-a–inducible gene signatures occurred at the same disease sites. Keywords: Affymetrix Human Genome U133 Plus 2.0 array A total of 82 Affymetrix HGU133 Plus arrays were run on 54 total subjects. This includes: skin biopsy samples from 21 normal healthy donors (Normal-1 to Normal-21), 56 skin biopsy samples from 28 psoriasis patients who had match lesional and uninvolved (non-lesional) tissue (NS-1/LS-1 to NS-9/LS-9, NS-11/LS-11 to NS-14/LS-14, and NS-16/LS-16 to NS-30/LS-30), and 5 samples from psoriasis patients that only provided lesional skin biopsies (LS-10, LS-15, and LS-31 to LS-33).