About Research

Leading Research

With the release of the 2020 – 2024 Strategic Plan, the NPF Research Team reaffirmed its commitment to lead collaborative, transformational research in psoriatic disease by defining four focus area benchmarks:

• Generate research resulting in higher numbers of patients in remission and identify tools to extend remission periods.
• Fund a diagnostic test for psoriatic arthritis (PsA) that has broad clinical utility, with the test having been developed, tested, and approved for use.
• Identify a reliable, predictive model for onset of psoriatic disease, the potential relationship to comorbid conditions and the best treatment practices for a cure.
• Establish a multi‐institution, multi‐disciplinary, team‐based, virtual cluster whose stated aim is to identify an intervention that will prevent the onset of psoriatic disease or its comorbidities.

In addition to supporting research through funding opportunities, NPF conducts internal research in collaboration with the NPF Scientific Advisory Committee, COVID-19 Task Force, and Medical Board, as well as research through partnerships with other institutions, such as the LITE study. NPF is preparing for the first Foundation-led clinical study, an evaluation of the effect of educational intervention on treatment outcomes. NPF has received an $990,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to expand public health education and awareness, improving surveillance, diagnosis, and treatment of psoriasis and PsA to improve patient population health outcomes.

Funding Research

NPF is the largest nonprofit funder of psoriasis and PsA research in the world. Beginning with an initial investment in 1987 through the Pilot Program award, NPF has invested over $30 million in grants and fellowships focused on psoriatic disease and related comorbidities.

NPF advances research in psoriatic disease by maintaining a robust research program, contributing almost $4 million annually to support grant and fellowship programs, including support of research efforts in line with NPF’s 2020 – 2024 Strategic Plan, such as the Psoriasis Prevention Initiative and the PsA Diagnostic Test Grant.

NPF funding focuses on ‘buckets’ of expertise – training grants, traditional grants, bridge grants, and priority research initiatives.

Training opportunities, focused on developing future psoriatic disease researchers and supporting retention of early-career researchers, include Psoriatic Disease Research Fellowships, and Summer Student Research Grants. Furthering commitment to early-stage research support, NPF offers Early Career Research Grants to support retention of promising researchers in psoriatic disease. 

Traditional grant funding opportunities provide support across the expansive lifecycle of research. The road to better treatments begins with basic research that answers fundamental questions about disease mechanisms. At this early stage, funding support is critical in testing hypotheses. Discovery Grants can help advance basic science and develop understanding of the systemic nature of psoriatic disease and related comorbidities. Bridging the gap between the laboratory and clinical practice, Translational Research Grants support the costly, time-consuming work of converting discoveries from basic research into treatments that can be tested in clinical trials.

NPF is also committed to addressing comorbidities of psoriatic disease. Of special emphasis, NPF offers a More than Skin Deep: Mental Health Grant, committed to addressing this area of unmet need by funding research focused on investigating the effects of psoriatic disease on mental health at both the basic science and clinical intervention level.

Bridge Grant funding support is available to researchers who have submitted meritorious but unfunded K-type (career development) and R-type applications to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), or similar funding body, with a focus on psoriatic disease or related comorbidities.

To learn more about funded priority research mechanisms, please visit our Key Research Initiatives page.

Learn more about available NPF funding opportunities or donate to our research efforts.

NPF-Led Research and Publications

As a leader in collaborative, transformational psoriatic disease research, NPF-funded researchers and NPF staff have contributed dozens of publications to the scientific record. NPF publishes the latest research for dermatologists, rheumatologists, and the community in the Journal of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis.

Empowering those living with psoriatic disease to be both the subject and the scientist, NPF runs the Citizen Pscientist project, where more than seven thousand patients have joined, sharing their experiences and insights. To more fully understand the psoriatic disease community and their areas of need, NPF conducts an Annual Survey of people affected by psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.

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