Johann Gudjonsson
University of Michigan, MI·Microbiology & Immunology
Why does skin become chronically inflamed or scarred in autoimmune diseases, and why do these diseases strike women far more often than men? About 70% of people with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the body's own tissues, develop skin rashes.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
- Topics
systemic lupus erythematosus
cutaneous lupus erythematosus
systemic sclerosis
- Grants
- 5 known grants, through May 2030
What they work on
- 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.
- Test whether inflammation in cutaneous lupus is concentrated near hair follicles and the junction between the outer and inner skin layers, by studying where interacting cells sit close together.
- Identify chromatin changes in lupus stromal cells that may act as an inflammatory memory promoting relapses, and test whether treatment reverses them.
- Dissect how the Hippo signaling pathway drives fibroblasts to become collagen-making myofibroblasts and drives endothelial cells to turn fibroblast-like in systemic sclerosis skin.
- Assess how LAMP3+ dendritic cells, inflammatory immune cells that contact collagen-producing cells, and the sex-biased regulator VGLL3 promote skin fibrosis in systemic sclerosis.
- Elucidate how VGLL3 moves into the nucleus and modulates TEAD transcription factors to switch on IL-7, an immune signaling molecule, and test whether interferons are needed for its female-biased expression.
- Determine how IL-7 drives body-wide lupus-like autoimmunity, using mice that overexpress Vgll3 in the skin and mice lacking the IL-7 receptor.
- Provide CRISPR/Cas9 gene and epigenome editing of keratinocytes, the Skin Gene Query Tool database, and genetically engineered mouse models to help skin researchers move from discovery to tested function.
More about the research
Systemic sclerosis, a related disease, hardens and thickens the skin. Most lupus research has focused on immune cells. These projects instead ask how stromal cells, the structural cells of skin, drive and sustain disease together with immune cells. Stromal cells include keratinocytes (the main surface skin cells), fibroblasts (connective-tissue cells that make collagen) and endothelial cells (which line blood vessels). A recurring thread is VGLL3, a sex-biased gene regulator that acts in the Hippo signaling pathway. The work also supports a center that provides gene-editing, data and mouse-model resources for skin research.
Why it matters
Lupus and systemic sclerosis cause disfiguring skin disease, organ damage and poor quality of life, and both affect mostly women. Identifying how skin stromal cells keep inflammation going, and how the VGLL3, Hippo and IL-7 pathways drive sex-biased autoimmunity and fibrosis, could point to new treatment targets. It could also help guide therapies that prevent lupus flares. The center's shared editing, data and mouse-model resources aim to speed skin research toward benefits for patients with many skin disorders.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sung Lim
Emory University, GA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether social determinants of health, such as economic and neighborhood conditions, predict work loss, end-stage kidney disease and mortality among people with systemic lupus erythematosus in the Atlanta-area GOAL cohort.
Howard Chang
Stanford University, CA·Microbiology & Immunology
Characterize anti-Xist RNP antibodies (AXA), autoantibodies against a female-specific RNA-protein complex, in patient blood using a newly developed protein array.
Shervin Assassi
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine how much removing Irf7 specifically from fibroblasts reduces skin fibrosis, in bleomycin-induced and Tsk1 mouse models of dermal fibrosis.
The school
University of Michigan: 124 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 963 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.