Under the joint guidance of Professor Xiao Shengxiang from the Department of Dermatology of the Second Affiliated Hospital of XJTU and Professor Zhi Liu from the Department of Dermatology and Immune system of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, doctoral candidate Zhang Yang discovered through the construction of BP180 gene defect mice model ΔNC16A that the BP180 dysfunction triggers spontaneous skin inflammation characterized by severe itch, inflammatory cell infiltration, skin barrier damage and increasing of serum IgE levels. Based on internal and external experiments on mice, the study also confirmed that the occurrence of inflammation and itch relies on the mediation of inflammatory factors secreted by keratinocytes, rather than the adaptive immunity mediated by the T-cell and B-cell. The study not only provides an available mice model to research on BP180 related diseases, but also has verified the biological function of BP180 in controlling and mediating the skin inflammation, providing possible therapeutic target for curing BP180 related diseases.

Recently, the study was published on the international famous journal PNAS. Doctoral candidate Zhang Yang is the first author, Professor Xiao Shengxiang is the co-corresponding author. The Department of Dermatology of the Second Affiliated Hospital of XJTU is the institutional affiliation of the first author.