NPF-Funded Research

Project Summary:

People with psoriasis have a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes that is not fully explained by traditional risk factors. This project asks whether inflammation in blood vessels caused by psoriasis can be detected using routine heart scans. We aim to develop a psoriasis-specific imaging biomarker that acts like a virtual biopsy of blood vessel inflammation and to test whether it predicts future cardiovascular events and response to treatment. This work could enable earlier identification of high-risk patients with psoriasis and support more personalized prevention strategies to improve long-term heart health.

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

This project advances the NPF mission by addressing a major unmet need in psoriatic disease: excess cardiovascular risk driven by systemic inflammation. By developing a psoriasis-specific imaging biomarker of vascular inflammation, this work aims to improve early identification of high-risk patients, inform treatment decisions, and support personalized cardiovascular prevention. The ability to non-invasively measure inflammatory vascular activity may ultimately guide more effective therapies and reduce long-term cardiovascular complications in people living with psoriasis.

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

NPF funding would be pivotal to my development as a UK-based early-career investigator at the intersection of cardiology, immunology, and psoriasis research. This award would support my goal of establishing cardio-rheumatology in the UK, building transatlantic collaborations with U.S. leaders in the field, and developing independent expertise in biomarker-driven cardiovascular risk stratification in psoriasis. Ultimately, this funding will help me introduce innovative research and clinical pathways for patients with psoriatic disease within the NHS.

Researcher Profile:

Dr Christos Kotanidis is a NIHR funded Academic Clinical Lecturer at the University of Oxford and the Radcliffe Department of Medicine. His research focuses on the application of advanced imaging and radiotranscriptomic approaches to vascular inflammation. His work bridges translational science and clinical medicine, aiming to develop novel, non-invasive tools to better characterize vascular disease and guide personalized therapy. After completing his DPhil at Oxford in 2022, Chris pursued further academic clinical training at Newcastle University as an NIHR funded Academic Clinical Fellow, where he formed international collaborations with Oxford, Harvard, and the NIH. He is currently working on pioneering machine learning techniques to integrate imaging and molecular data, with a focus on understanding how therapeutic interventions, such as targeted biologics, alter vascular inflammation, using data from randomized controlled trials. Chris also served as an Editorial Fellow at the New England Journal of Medicine and has a strong interest in clinical trial design, translational imaging, and cardio-rheumatology. Chris has secured competitive national and international funding, with >4,500 citations (h-index 22). He has
published as first author in The New England Journal of Medicine (IF: 84.5), Nature Reviews Cardiology (IF: 50.2), European Heart Journal (IF: 45.3), The Lancet Digital Health (IF: 25.5), and JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging (IF:19), and as a co-author in The Lancet (IF: 109), The Lancet Respiratory Medicine (IF: 34.7), Journal of the American College of Cardiology (IF: 22.3) and Science Translational Medicine (IF: 15.6).