Dresden 2026 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 8: Systems and Networks Biophysics
BP 8.5: Talk
Monday, March 9, 2026, 18:00–18:15, BAR/0106
Simulation of autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases: the novel mechanism of psoriasis progression. — •Nadezhda Esenkova1,2, Lukas Pöschl1,2, Gerard C. L. Wong3, and Vasily Zaburdaev1,2 — 1Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany — 2Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin, Germany — 3University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases (AIIDs) still remain an unsolved problem. One of the most studied diseases which carries features of both types is psoriasis. In this study, we are focusing on the novel mechanism of disease enhancement, driven by antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and AMP-like fragments organizing innate immune ligands for enhanced binding to Toll-Like Receptors in immune cells. These fragments have a diverse origin: there is strong recent evidence that serine proteases can digest viral and host proteins into AMP-like fragments. In order to explore the effect of this emerging pathway, we developed a new unified interaction network model for psoriasis, based on the current extant measurements. The model was reduced to a system of nonlinear differential equations, which were studied by using dynamical system theory and numerical methods. Importantly, we find that the proposed model can reproduce the full spectrum of disease progression from healthy response to uncontrolled inflammation and allows comparison of different therapeutic interventions. Finally, by expanding the model to include diffusion, we can successfully predict the geometry of psoriatic plaques, the precise measurements of which may inform modulation of treatment.
Keywords: psoriasis; autoimmunity; reaction; peptides; patterns