Dysregulation of Type 2 Immune Pathway

Raj Chovatiya:

Atopic dermatitis is inherently a disorder of immune dysregulation, and there's several other different modules involved in this disease state, including barrier dysfunction, changes in the nerves and changes in the microbiome, but primarily dysregulation of the immune system is what's underlying nearly every individual that experiences the signs and symptoms of atopic dermatitis.

Over the past decade, what we've learned is that a major component of this immune dysregulation is what's known as the type 2 inflammatory response, essentially an orchestrated situation of cells and cytokines and chemokines that are all functioning to create many of the lesions and symptoms that we think about with atopic dermatitis.

Type 2 inflammation evolved primarily from our ability to respond to a diverse variety of external stimuli. When that process goes into overdrive, many of the symptoms of AD, like itching, like skin pain that we think about, and the signs as well in terms of lesions, erythema thickness, all come into play. So there's a reason why many of our therapeutics have been designed to target this pathway primarily, as we know that cytokines like IL-4, IL-13, IL-31, and others are heavily involved in driving forward not only the immune dysregulation, but acquired barrier dysfunction and even neuronal sensitization as well.