Scientists at the University of Copenhagen published in 2019 the first comprehensive proteomic atlas of normal skin tissue. 1 Subsequently, scientists have defined, at the transcriptomics level, a comprehensive atlas of ageing skin 2 and more recently, others have defined, in granular detail, specific cell subtypes in skin diseases. 3e add to this expanding body of literature by publishing in this issue of the Journal the work from Dr Shou and colleagues from Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China, in which they analysed clinical samples via single-cell RNA sequencing obtained from patients with a variety of skin conditions.The results were then validated using an independent patient cohort and in vitro fibroblast experiments.They found six independent inflammatory phenotypes, each characterized by distinct variations in inflammatory pathways.These inflammatory phenotypes offer new insights into inflammatory abnormalities and shared characteristics across different skin conditions.Potentially, this enhancing our understanding of both why subgroups within defined skin diseases are resistant to biological therapies and also leading to more refined targeting of therapies in these patients.
Seamas C. Donnelly (Sun,) studied this question.