NPF-Funded Research

Project Summary:

Psoriasis is a long-lasting skin disease that affects the whole body and quality of life. Many people with psoriasis also have gum disease (periodontitis), but we still do not know whether inflamed gums actually make psoriasis worse or how this might happen. Recent work shows that an immune molecule called IL-17 is important in both psoriasis and periodontitis.

In this project, I will use mouse models and advanced imaging tools to test whether gum inflammation raises IL-17 levels in the blood and puts the skin into an “over-reactive” state. In this primed state, small everyday triggers may cause stronger psoriasis-like rashes. By understanding this mouth-to-skin connection, we hope to learn whether better oral care and targeted immune treatments could become simple, everyday ways to lower flare risk and improve life for people living with psoriatic disease.

How will your project help improve the lives of the 125 million affected by psoriatic disease?

This project addresses a simple but important question for people living with psoriatic disease: does gum disease make their skin disease worse, and if so, how? By defining whether periodontitis raises IL-17 levels in the blood and “primes” the skin to over-react, this work will clarify whether oral inflammation is a modifiable driver of psoriatic flares.

If our hypothesis is correct, the results could support new strategies that combine optimal psoriasis medications with proactive oral care to lower flare frequency and severity. In the long term, identifying the IL-17-related pathways that link the mouth and skin may reveal new biomarkers of flare risk and new therapeutic targets. Together, these advances could help people with psoriatic disease achieve more stable control, fewer flares, and better overall health.

Why is psoriatic disease research important to you, personally? What role will this award play in your research efforts or career development?

As a dermatologist, I have cared for many patients whose lives were deeply affected by psoriatic disease, not only by visible skin lesions but also by pain, fatigue, and social stigma. These experiences motivated me to become a physician-scientist and to ask mechanistic questions that come directly from the clinic, such as why some patients flare repeatedly despite good treatment of the skin alone.

This award will be a key step in my development as an independent investigator. NPF support allows me to establish my own research niche at the interface of dermatology, oral health, and immunology, and to generate the mechanistic data needed for future independent grants. It will also help me build lasting collaborations between dermatology and dentistry, with the long-term goal of integrating oral and skin care to improve outcomes for people with psoriatic disease.

Researcher Profile:

Akimasa Adachi is a board-certified dermatologist and postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Immunology at Harvard Medical School. He received his M.D. from Tokyo Medical and Dental University and his Ph.D. in Immunology from Kyoto University. His research focuses on how systemic immune signals and tissue-specific factors interact to drive skin inflammation, with recent work uncovering hormonal regulation of psoriasis and early biomarkers of severe skin reactions.