Explore our grantees and awardees

Grant category: LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships

Year: 2023

Geography: Denmark

Project title: Staphylococcus aureus drives inflammation and disease activity in atopic dermatitis – novel approaches to old problems 

Fellowship theme: Skin Immunology and Inflammatory Skin Diseases

Terkild Brink Buus’ vision is to develop better strategies to manage Atopic Dermatitis (AD) and improve patient lives by increasing our understanding and providing vital insights into the underlying biology. AD is a debilitating disease affecting more than 30% of Danish children at great cost to patients, parents, and society.

Terkild Brink Buus’s project addresses the role of bacteria and their toxins in causing severe worsening of the AD. Building on his expertise in complex data analysis and research on aberrant T cells and skin inflammation, Terkild Brink Buus will explore how T cells – a vital part of our immune system – are hijacked by bacterial toxins to aggravate AD and how this can be counteracted by novel treatments.

Terkild Brink Buus hopes to increase our understanding of how bacteria and their toxins affect the skin and worsen the symptoms of AD patients. His research will provide the basis for initiating clinical trials of new treatment approaches targeting bacteria in AD patients as well as guidelines for how to determine which patients are most likely to benefit. Finally, he will provide several novel laboratory and analytical techniques that will be of high value to future research within inflammatory skin diseases.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships

Year: 2023

Geography: Denmark

Project title – ILnext: Unravelling the potential of ionic liquids as next generation cutaneous drug delivery systems

Fellowship theme: Skin Physiology and Cutaneous Drug Delivery

Stine Rønholt’s vision is to explore new ways to treat chronic skin issues (like eczema) directly on the skin. Today, such diseases are primarily treated by immunosuppressants, that upon systemic exposure can weaken the immune system. Atopic dermatitis is effectively treated by a type of medicine called JAK inhibitors, administered as tablets. Yet, direct administration of JAK inhibitors via the skin is hampered by the skin’s tough outer layer.

Stine Rønholt’s project will develop a new technology that treats eczema directly on the skin. To do so, Stine Rønholt is using a novel approach, “ionic liquids,” which can increase the drug solubility allowing for high dose treatment. Much like how sugar dissolves in water. This approach will help to deliver more medicine into the skin, targeting and treating eczema more effectively. Stine Rønholt’s goal is to figure out how to make this work for two specific JAK inhibitors, baricitinib and abrocitinib. Focus here is currently directed towards understanding how the ionic liquids used work together with the drugs, as well as what happens to the skin when the drug is applied. Even though the drug needs to be transported across the skin to where it is going to work, the technology should not cause any irritability to the skin. Special biophysical techniques are to be used to study all these things closely.

Stine Rønholt hopes to be able to deliver a high amount of medicine directly to a problem area without any uncomfortable procedures by using this approach. This could enhance treatment and lower the frequency of medicine required. Additionally, insights gained from Stine Rønholt’s project may pave the way for a new and improved method of addressing skin issues in a more efficient manner.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships

Year: 2023

Geography: Denmark

Project title – T-cell derived extracellular vesicles constitute pro-inflammatory packages that drive disease progression in psoriasis

Fellowship theme: Skin Immunology and Inflammatory Skin Diseases

Aida Hansen’s vision is to improve the treatment options for psoriasis patients by contributing to a more detailed understanding of the cellular cross-talk mediating the inflammatory processes in the disease. She aims to investigate a novel concept for cellular cross-talk, mediated by vesicular structures known as extracellular vesicles (EVs), that may drive inflammation in psoriasis.

Aida Hansen’s project builds upon knowledge that psoriasis is mainly driven by pro-inflammatory cytokines, and recently, it was discovered that cytokines are partly packaged into EVs. She hypothesizes that the majority of cytokines implicated in psoriasis are carried in specific subsets of EVs constituting “pro-inflammatory packages”. She will: 1) Do an in-depth investigation of the packaging of cytokines into EVs derived from patients with severe psoriasis, 2) Investigate the functional impact of specific EV-subpopulations in driving the inflammatory response in psoriasis, and 3) Explore the therapeutic concept for neutralizing specific disease-promoting EVs in psoriasis.

Aida Hansen hopes to contribute to a deeper understanding of how cytokines are being transported between cells and the potentially different biological properties of soluble cytokines compared to cytokines packaged into EVs. This is still poorly understood. The outcome of her project may lead to identification of new inflammatory pathways and novel depletion strategies for innovative therapeutic interventions to alleviate symptoms and improve the quality of life for patients with severe psoriasis.