In this CREST project, our goal is to create a research system (integrated system blueprint) to elucidate the pathogenesis of intractable skin disease and to develop new treatment methods through the fusion of mathematical science, data science, and clinical medicine, starting from the unprecedented idea of mathematically understanding the temporal changes in the geometric patterns that appear on the skin, namely, patio-temporal change of skin eruptions. 

 

　The skin is the largest organ in the human body that plays an important role in not only maintaining homeostasis in the body but also protecting the body from the external environment, and is extremely important in maintaining vital functions. In addition, since the skin is closely related to the human immune system, it is involved in people's health and life in various ways, from life-threatening skin cancer to infectious diseases such as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, rubella, and chickenpox, as well as diseases that affect daily life over the years, such as atopic dermatitis and chronic urticaria.

 

Skin diseases appear visibly on the skin (body) in the form of skin eruptions and it is easy to be found. However, there are many skin diseases that develop uniquely in humans, and the lack of appropriate animal (biological) models often forces us to infer the pathogenesis from limited clinical data. Therefore, it is very difficult to elucidate the underlying mechanisms within the body, and there are many cases that are difficult to cure completely in clinical practice.

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　Urticaria is one of the most common skin diseases, affecting one in five people in the general population at least once in their lifetime. It can also appear as a cutaneous manifestation of life-threatening conditions such as anaphylactic shock, yet its mechanism is still shrouded in much mystery. Urticaria appears as variously shaped wheals ranging in size from a few millimeters to several centimeters on the body and is accompanied by itching. Chronic urticaria in particular is difficult to cure completely, and once it develops, it affects a person's life on a time scale of several years to several decades, seriously affecting daily life, including a decline in the quality of schoolwork and work. The limitation of these skin diseases is that they have a "visible output" of wheals on the surface of the skin, but the input and the process that causes the result are completely invisible. Furthermore, in a skin disease such as urticaria, there is very little input information, and even the output data obtained in clinical practice is extremely limited because the symptoms change on a short time scale. Therefore, elucidating the pathogenesis of these diseases is the most difficult problem of all, for which no breakthrough can be found using conventional research methods.

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　Therefore, in this CREST project, we propose a completely new approach that will change the way of thinking in dermatology. Our starting point is the "shape of the eruptions that appears on the skin." This is the design of a new roadmap to dermatology by combining mathematical science and data science to predict the molecular-level mechanisms and dynamics of skin diseases in the body (human in vivo), a world that is completely unseen. We aim to establish a new fusion research system based on a revolutionary idea that connects the invisible world with the visible world.

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