Jessica Turnier
University of Michigan, MI·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) is a rare autoimmune disease in children that can be life-threatening. It often starts with skin inflammation and can progress to muscle weakness, calcium deposits under the skin (calcinosis) and severe lung disease.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Microbiology & Immunology
Genetics
- Topics
juvenile dermatomyositis
pediatric autoimmune disease
autoimmunity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2028
What they work on
- Identify skin and blood gene expression signatures that predict treatment response in juvenile dermatomyositis, using non-invasive skin sampling of lesional and non-lesional skin in a longitudinal patient cohort.
- Compare skin-specific and paired blood signatures to determine whether tissue-level data give better biomarkers of JDM treatment response.
- Profile myeloid immune cells in skin and blood of children with treatment-refractory JDM, using single-cell and spatial transcriptomics to map gene activity cell by cell within tissue.
- Test whether myeloid cells mediate skin inflammation and skin–systemic immune crosstalk in JDM, using patient-derived keratinocytes and myeloid cells and systems biology analysis.
More about the research
Two-thirds of children do not respond to their first treatment. Doctors have no reliable markers to predict who will respond, and no targeted therapies. Inflammation often persists in the skin. Studying gene activity there may therefore reveal why some children respond to treatment and others do not.
Why it matters
Children with JDM often do not respond to initial treatment. Doctors lack tools to predict response or choose targeted therapies. Skin and blood gene signatures linked to treatment response could become biomarkers for diagnosis, monitoring and treatment choice. Insights into myeloid cells could point to new treatment targets for children with treatment-resistant disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kathryn Torok
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Identify cell-specific gene activity signatures and their spatial relationships in skin from children with jSSc and jLS versus healthy controls, using single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics.
Masanori Matsumoto
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Use a new atopic dermatitis-like mouse model, with S. aureus applied to the skin, to test whether the Agr quorum-sensing system drives skin inflammation by causing keratinocytes to release alarmin danger signals.
Johann Gudjonsson
University of Michigan, MI·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how plasmacytoid dendritic cells and keratinocytes in lupus skin interact over space and time to start and sustain type I interferon responses, the antiviral-like signaling that marks lupus inflammation.
The school
University of Michigan: 124 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 963 research doctorates a year.
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