Masanori Matsumoto
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Atopic dermatitis (AD), often called eczema, is a long-lasting inflammatory skin disease. It affects 15–30% of children and about 5% of adults in industrialized countries, and good ways to prevent or treat it are lacking.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
atopic dermatitis
eczema
Staphylococcus aureus
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- 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.
- Determine how S. aureus colonizes the skin and why expression of its Agr virulence system rises in inflamed lesional skin, using the AD-like mouse model.
- Measure S. aureus Agr virulence gene expression in lesional and non-lesional skin of atopic dermatitis patients, and test how patient-derived S. aureus strains affect skin inflammation.
More about the research
One clue is the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, which lives on the inflamed skin of more than 90% of AD patients. How this microbe drives the disease is unknown.
Why it matters
People with atopic dermatitis, especially the many children affected, have few effective options to prevent or treat flares. By defining how S. aureus Agr virulence factors and skin factors trigger inflammation, this work could point to new therapy targets for AD, such as blocking bacterial virulence signals rather than the immune response alone.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Emma Guttman
University of Rochester, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Identify skin gene, protein and microbiome biomarkers that raise the risk of atopic dermatitis or support a healthy skin barrier, comparing high-risk Rochester infants with low-risk Old Order Mennonite infants.
Madison Collins
Montana State University, MT·Microbiology & Immunology
Test the hypothesis that molecules controlled by the S. aureus SaeR/S gene regulatory system disrupt autophagy, a self-digestion process that kills trapped microbes, in human neutrophils after they swallow the bacteria.
Jessica Turnier
University of Michigan, MI·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
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.
The school
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: 41 labs on PI Pages, $907M a year on research, 870 research doctorates a year.
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