How innervation regulates regeneration and scarring responses
Grantee: Ya-Chieh Hsu, Professor, Harvard University
Amount: DKK 4,000,000
Grant category: Serendipity Grants
Year: 2024
Geography: USA
Ya-Chieh Hsu’s project investigates the mechanisms behind the unexpected observation that wound healing slows upon increased innervation of the surrounding tissue.
During testing of a virus-based tool designed to genetically manipulate skin cells Ya-Chieh Hsu and her team serendipitously discovered that increased innervation at a wound site slows healing and leads to increased scarring. This discovery suggests that wound-induced hyper-innervation may be important in driving scarring and fibrosis.
Dissecting the effects of sex hormones and sex chromosomes in heightened cutaneous inflammation in female mice
Grantee: Philip Scumpia, Associate Professor, The Regents of the University of California, Los Angeles
Amount: DKK 3,977,971
Grant category: Serendipity Grants
Year: 2024
Geography: USA
Philip Scumpia’s project will investigate a surprising discovery that links gender to differences in immune responses.
Philip Scumpia and his team created new formulations of biomaterials intended to improve cutaneous wound healing and decrease size of scars in his current LEO Foundation-funded project. While evaluating the immunological mechanisms, Philip and his team observed considerable variability in immune cell recruitment to the different hydrogels. After careful scrutiny they realized this variability was entirely due to the fact that female mice developed stronger immune responses to the hydrogel than male mice. Strikingly, female mice displayed a much earlier and more severe skin inflammation in other mouse models studied in the laboratory includingeczema, psoriasis, and sunburn.
Role for adipocytes and crosstalk with eosinophils in atopic dermatitis pathogenesis
Grantee: Nathan Archer, Assistant Professor, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Amount: DKK 3,999,693
Grant category: Serendipity Grants
Year: 2024
Geography: USA
Nathan Archer’s project investigates the surprising finding that dermal adipocytes and their crosstalk with eosinophils may play an important role in the development of atopic dermatitis.
The aim of Nathan Archer’s original project was to investigate the role of eosinophils, a type of immune cell, in the pronounced bacterial dysbiosis seen in relation to atopic dermatitis (AD). During those studies, Nathan Archer and his team serendipitously discovered an unexpected interaction of adipocytes with eosinophils in the skin, which was also associated with skin inflammation. This novel link will be investigated in Nathan’s project.