# Preferential perinatal thymic programming of skin-homing innate lymphoid cells in early establishment of skin homeostasis

> **NIH NIH U01** · UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HLTH SCIENCE CENTER · 2021 · $381,536

## Abstract

Summary
The skin is the outmost epithelial tissue of a body that is under frequent assaults of
environmental agents. To protect against the assaults and maintain the local tissue
integrity, immune cells need to be properly positioned in the skin. A group of immune
cells, namely innate lymphoid cells (ILCs), are preferentially localized in the skin where
they function as the first line of defense but can also contribute to the skin inflammatory
diseases such as topical dermatitis and psoriasis when dysregulated. The goal of this
project is to understand how the establishment of ILCs in the skin is regulated for the
immune protection and homeostasis of the skin during early fetal/neonatal stages. Our
preliminary study discovered a novel process that directs fetal/newborn thymic NK1.1+
ILCs to acquire a skin-homing property for their specific localization into the skin.
Considering that the skin is under assaults of environmental agents immediately after
the birth, we propose that the preferential generation of fetal/neonatal thymic innate
lymphocytes with skin-homing properties represents a developmentally programmed
process that targets innate lymphocyte populations to the skin for the “border” protection
in the neonatal stage and helps establish the immune homeostasis. In this application,
we propose to dissect molecular mechanisms regulating the preferential acquisition of
the skin-homing property by fetal thymic innate lymphocytes and its roles in promoting
the establishment of skin immune homeostasis.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10115574
- **Project number:** 5U01AI131393-05
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HLTH SCIENCE CENTER
- **Principal Investigator:** Na Xiong
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $381,536
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-03-01 → 2024-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10115574

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10115574, Preferential perinatal thymic programming of skin-homing innate lymphoid cells in early establishment of skin homeostasis (5U01AI131393-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10115574. Licensed CC0.

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