Skin Tape Harvesting for Transcriptomics Analysis

Transcriptomics is the study of how RNA is expressed under specific conditions. Transcriptomic analyses of lesional skin biopsies can be a useful way to track how a patient responds to a drug and separate out drug responders from non-responders. However, biopsies are painful, carry risk of bleeding infections and scarring. A non-invasive approach, such as tape-harvesting, to obtain transcriptomic data from psoriatic skin would increase our capabilities to monitor patients on treatment and potentially help us predict if the drug will be effective sooner. However, it is not known how well tape-harvesting can capture transcriptomic changes that are occurring in psoriatic skin. The purpose of this study is to address how well tape-harvesting captures the transcriptomic changes that are occurring in psoriatic skin.