Rachel Hargest (Senior Lecturer/Consultant Surgeon): with James Birchall (Senior Lecturer, School of Pharmacy), Cardiff University
Problem addressed, background and significance. Pyoderma gangrenosum (PG) is a distressing condition in which some patients with inflammatory bowel disease develop painful skin and stomal ulcers. All current treatment for PG is unsatisfactory and there is virtually no scientific evidence for benefit from any of the commonly used drugs.
Method(s) used. Gene therapy, where genetic material can be introduced to replace defective genes, or increase the activity of effective ones, is likely to provide a future strategy for the treatment of PG.
This study will first investigate the effect of commonly used PG drugs on the growth of skin cells and assess their toxicity. Second it will investigate the potential of gene transfer in skin cells and fresh human skin. The third aspect involves testing the potentially useful genes in skin. Importantly these studies will be performed on both healthy skin and also skin derived from patients with PG, as the skin types are likely to react differently.
The result of this research will be….. to enable us to determine whether therapeutic gene therapy can have a role in the treatment of this painful and debilitating condition.
This page was last updated on 20-07-2011