Master Internship Project: Serological biomarkers for atopic dermatitis
Atopic dermatitis (eczema) is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that has an enormous impact on quality of life. Atopic dermatitis (AD) is suggested to be a multifactorial disease, meaning that the exact cause(s) of the disease are unknown but many factors may play a role in the pathogenesis.
Patients with AD present with different clinical phenotypes, but there are no objective discriminators between these presentations. Over the last couple of years, increasing numbers of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines have been described to correlate with disease severity in AD patients. In addition, technical advancements enable the determination of large numbers of serum biomarkers simultaneously in small volumes of serum.
In a cohort of 200 well-characterized AD patients with moderate to severe AD, we determined 150 serum biomarkers (including many cytokines and chemokines) using
Luminex analysis. In addition, we determined total IgE levels and performed ImmunoCAP
ISAC. ImmunoCAP ISAC is an in vitro diagnostic test for simultaneous measurement of specific IgE antibodies to a broad spectrum of allergen components (112 components from
51 allergen sources).
What do we want to learn from these data? We hypothesize that the different clinical phenotypes are reflected by different serological signatures. The challenge will be to integrate clinical, biomarker and biological pathways and investigate what subsets are present in this cohort.
We are looking for a master student with good programming and statistical skills to integrate clinical and biomarker data.
You will be part of a team including a biostatistician (Julia Drylewicz, PhD), a PhD student
(Judith Thijs, MD), a theoretical biologist (Jose Borghans, PhD) and a dermatologist
(DirkJan Hijnen, MD, PhD).
Please contact us for more information:
Julia Drylewicz: J.Drylewicz@umcutrecht.nl
DirkJan Hijnen: D.J.Hijnen@umcutrecht.nl