Alopecia Areata

[deleted-145947]

I am not sure if you are familiar with the condition alopecia areata or not, if you are not - It is an absolutely unbelievable autoimmune condition in which your body's own white blood cells attack hair follicles growing a new strand of hair.

I am designing an experiment involving alopecia and was curious if any one had an idea on what I could test?

I have been reading a lot about corticosteroids and photochemotherapy.

In photochemotherapy, the patient will either topically or orally receive a light sensitive drug called psoralen. Then, the patient will undergo ultraviolet B radiation.

How interesting!

I am not exactly sure what to test but am hoping you could give me some guidance.

Thank you so much!

[deleted-143835]

Wow, what an interesting topic!

I just did some basic research on that condition; I had never heard of it before, and it sounds really interesting. Some broad areas you could test would be narrowing down the cause of this condition or analyzing its effects. Remember, while such a project (dealing with the autoimmune system) might be difficult to test in a lab, a virtual bioinformatics project, analyzing genes or proteins affecting this disorder, would be excellent too. Check out this link for inspiration on starting ideas! http://www.medicinenet.com/alopecia_areata/article.htm

You may also try analyzing the effectiveness of various existing treatment strategies - just some ideas! What side are you especially interested in?

Hope this helps!

[deleted-145947]

Very helpful thank you so much!

I did some research on the different genes and proteins that cause AA and I discovered a gene called ULBP3 that acts as a signal for cytotoxic cells,
under normal conditions, this gene is suppressed but in AA it acts as a signal and attracts a receptor called NKG2D that is accompanied by a killer immune cell which will in turn attach to the hair follicle and invade and destroy it.

So I think I am ultimately interested in looking into Gene suppressors and I plan on researching if there is a way to suppress the gene expression of ULBP3.

I still have a lot to figure out and you will be hearing from me a lot

Thank you again,

[deleted-143835]

No problem, happy to help!

Excellent, I think that you're definitely going in the right direction. Now that you've narrowed down your focus, it's probably best to do research on the gene suppressors involved and determine a specific factor to test. Please post back with any more questions and updates as you continue your research - we can always help you design your experiment further if you get stuck along the way.

[deleted-71536]

Hi Devyn,

We had some students interested in alopecia areata last year. Check out this post for more information: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... hp?t=10749

I hope this helps you as you decide how to do an experiment on this very interesting topic.

Heather

[deleted-132180]

Hello there,

I had actually never heard of this condition before and had to do some research on it myself, but what an interesting topic idea! Here are some questions that I had upon reading over the ideas you have, and these may be some important factors to consider as you are developing your project more:

1. Do you know what kind of protein or molecule ULBP3 is? If ULBP3 belongs to a family of proteins or molecules that have been well studied, chances are that there could be ideas on how to inhibit the expression of it, or perhaps even the binding of it to the NKG2D receptor.

2. Under what conditions are ULBP3 induced? How does AA create an environment that allows expression of ULBP3? If you understand the environmental cues that lead to ULBP3 expression, you can try thinking of ways to dampen these environmental cues to prevent ULBP3 from being produced in AA.

3. What kind of model will you be using to answer your experimental questions? Since AA is an immune condition, you would probably have to work with immune cells, which will most likely require a laboratory space and experienced mentor to help you plan and guide you as you conduct the experiments. If you are comfortable with working on animals, is there an animal model of AA that you can use to probe the effects of silencing ULBP3 expression in conditions of AA?

Let us know if you have anymore questions!

Connie

[deleted-145947]

Hello again!

ok, I am a little stuck.

I have determined I am going to test possible ways of preventing the binding of two proteins... ULBP3 (located on an affected AA hair follicle) and NKG2D (accompanied by the immune cell)

Now I have run into a few problems...

One of them being the price of these proteins, for a few micrograms, it is in the three to five hundred range.

With this in mind I figured I would use an inexpensive version of another protein that could replace these ones.

I am also lost when I am designing my experiment. I want to create a solution that could prevent the two from binding... but I do not know what or how to test this.

Any advice would be appreciated immensely!

Thank you again,

Devyn

[deleted-140482]

Hi Devyn,

You are proposing a very sophisticated experiment that is going to be very difficult to accomplish using the tools (and money) available to you. If you really want to do this, I recommend you look at nearby universities and try to find someone that is doing similar research. You should contact them and see if one of them would be willing to mentor you through this science fair project. That way they would have the expertise and tools you need, and you might not need to buy the proteins because they could have them on hand and be willing to share them with you. If you can't find someone to do this with, you may need to revise your project, because proteins are not interchangeable, so I'm not sure how to come up with a lower cost replacement. Proteins have very unique and defined structures which are crucial to their binding, so a substitute is unlikely to be very relevant for your disease.

One alternative you could consider is attempting to take your project more virtual. There is often a lot of information about protein structures and sometimes interactions available to the public online. You could try to see what information is available about how ULBP3 and NKG2D bind, or their structures. Then you could attempt to model their binding and determine virtually what might inhibit their binding. (For example, if they bind primarily via ionic interactions, you might be able to interfere with binding by changing the ion strength of the solution).

I hope this helps! You have a really interesting idea and it would be great if you could find a way to test it.
JMP

[deleted-132180]

Hi Devyn,

I think you have really cool ideas but I agree with JMP that these questions would be extremely difficult to test without a lab space. Are there any local universities that study Alopecia areata that you can potentially contact to see if they are willing to help you with your project? Like JMP said, you can also take your project in a more virtual direction, but if you want to do actual experiments in the lab, then contacting a local university will be your best bet because they would be able to give you advice on what is possible to do for the resources that they have in the amount of time you have before your project is due. Like you had mentioned, you can probably do your experiments in vitro by using purified versions of the protein and study what kind of molecules or environmental conditions may be able to disrupt their interactions. You can also do your experiments in a more physiologically relevant setting by using actual immune cells and/or an animal model of this disease. Again, the best people to contact would be people who are actually doing research on this disease to see which experimental model would be best to address your questions.

Hope this helped. Let us know if you have anymore questions!

Best,
Connie