Purchase of an Actimetrics LumiCycle32 luminometer for the assessment of circadian biology of the skin including psoriasis

Many would consider personalised medicine to be the future of healthcare, at least for the management of chronic inflammatory disease.  It is increasingly evident that circadian rhythms play an important role in human health and skin physiology.  Early evidence suggests that circadian rhythms are involved in the development and maintenance of skin diseases including psoriasis.  If researchers can understand these relationships well, we may be able to harness this to improve outcomes for patients, for instance by delivering treatments at a particular time of day – but currently a significant knowledge gap exists.

My pilot work (co-funded by the NESRF) discovered that psoriasis plaques possess time-of-day variation in clock gene activity, but that the clock appears disrupted (ref).

I was awarded a small project grant from NESRF which contributed to the purchase of a LumiCycle32 luminometer (Actimetrics, USA; images).  The LumiCycle32 allows researchers to examine circadian rhythms in real-time and is the “gold standard” approach in the field.  I hope to use this to learn more about the psoriasis clock (but the process is transferable and could be applied to other skin diseases too, such as eczema or alopecia areata) and take us one step closer to personalised therapy.