Explore our grantees and awardees

Grant category: LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Project: Leveraging Real-World Data for Dermato-Epidemiological Research of Bullous Pemphigoid and Lichen Planus in Denmark

Bullous pemphigoid and lichen planus are inflammatory diseases of the skin and mucosa causing significant discomfort and reduced quality of life. Still, their causes, treatments, and long-term effects are poorly understood. The project will use Denmark’s unique health registries to explore how common these diseases are, what triggers them, how they are managed, and their broader health impact. Findings will support data-driven healthcare, ensuring better resource allocation and equitable access to specialized care. Improved understanding of the diseases and their complications will also highlight gaps in care, improve disease awareness, and empower shared decision-making for patients and doctors. The project will be conducted within ARISE (the Aarhus University Research group for Investigating Skin disease Epidemiology), a new research initiative aimed at establishing a lasting foundation for this novel type of skin disease research and better patient care.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Project: The unraveling of the cutaneous microbiome in the pathogenesis of Hidradenitis Suppurativa: A potential treatment option

Millions of humans worldwide suffer from Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS), a chronic, auto-inflammatory skin disease, causing recurrent and painful boils in sweaty places. The foul-smelling nodules are often infected by anaerobic bacteria, but it is not yet known what role bacteria play in the development and worsening of the disease. With the often-used antibiotic treatment comes antibiotic resistance, a serious threat to the individual and global health. This project aims to decipher the functionality of the skin bacteria in HS and reveal their dynamics during antibiotic treatment by using advanced molecular methods. The final goal is to develop and test a non-antibiotic treatment based on bacteria from healthy skin. The outcome is an insight into the interplay between the bacteria and human cells and a step towards a better treatment strategy in HS.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Project title: Multiplexed Imaging-Powered Deep Visual Proteomics for Precision Dermatology

Skin diseases like mycosis fungoides (a type of skin cancer), psoriasis and eczema, are often hard to diagnose and treat, leading to years of suffering for patients. This project uses cutting-edge technology to map the proteins and immune cells in skin samples at a microscopic level. By combining this with artificial intelligence, the goal is to develop tools for earlier and more accurate diagnosis. The project also explores how the skin’s microbiome (the community of microbes living on the skin) influences these diseases, paving the way for new treatments. This research will enable faster personalized diagnoses, facilitate targeted treatments, and enhance patients’ quality of life.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Project title: Unraveling the Gut-Skin-Epigenome Axis: A Multi-Omics Approach to Early-Life Atopic Dermatitis

This project aims to uncover how gut health, immune responses, and environmental factors contribute to the development of atopic dermatitis (AD) in early life. By integrating data from the microbiome, proteins, and epigenetic changes, we will investigate how gut bacteria and their metabolites influence skin inflammation and immune regulation. We will also study how environmental exposures, like diet, stress, and pollution, leave lasting molecular “imprints” that may increase AD risk. Using data from the extensive COPSAC2010 birth cohort, we will track children from infancy to uncover early signs of AD and explore new targets for prevention and treatment. This research could pave the way for personalized, microbiome-based therapies to stop AD before it starts — shifting from managing symptoms to preventing the disease altogether.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

The LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellows received a two-year leadership coaching program as an add-on grant to their existing fellowship.

The LEO Foundation Fellows Leadership Coaching Program (LCP) will help identifying the fellow’s key strengths as well as their potential key leadership obstacles and situations they find most challenging within leadership – and how to handle these situations. During the coaching sessions they will identify and train new leadership skills going forward which can help them perform even better.

Potential themes for the leadership coaching sessions could be elements from the following sections:

• Learn more about your leadership style and get the best out of it
• Setting up – and leading the team
• Stakeholder Management
• Mentoring

Grant category: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Go Zebra is an organization dedicated to stimulating the STEM curiosity of children through educational material with a special focus on engineering and innovation. In the project, it joins forces with researchers Emma Aller (molecular biologist), Abdi Hedayat (conservator), and Tina Ibsen (astrophysicist and science communicator) in developing two free educational courses on evolution and plant science for 3rd-4th grade teachers and pupils. Teachers with a formal STEM education are in short supply, and the two courses will be designed so that they can also be taught by teachers without a STEM specialty. Classes participating in the project will have workshops facilitated by Go Zebra at their schools, and the developed material will become available for free.

Grant category: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

The project supports and develops the annual Bloom Festival on nature and science, which is free and open to everyone, in 2026-28. In addition to the festival program which targets the public in general, the activities include the continuation of the Bloom School initiative – a one-day event targeting school children – and Bloom Explore – digital science dissemination. Furthermore, a new activity, Bloom High School, will be introduced, targeting the upper secondary school level with an additional festival day customized for this age group.

Grant category: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

The Ungdommens Folkemøde festival in 2026-28 will be expanded with an area designated for STEM and health sciences-related activities, with the overall aim of increasing awareness of the role of science in developing society and solving societal challenges. The focus will be on dissemination from young to young. Engaging activities, such as hands-on experiments, workshops, and talks, will spark curiosity, provide STEM experiences outside the classroom, and allow visitors to meet other young people who are pursuing scientific interests in different ways, as well as STEM professionals. The annual two-day event is visited by 30,000 visitors each year, typically between the ages of 15 to 25.

Grant category: Serendipity Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén serendipitously found that ~15% of sequenced phages encode two adjacent, independently active endolysin genes, often with distinct catalytic and binding domains. In one example, each enzyme is active on its own, and modelling suggests they also form a complex. While developing a custom endolysin predictor incorporating gene neighbourhood context, he detected genomic patterns missed by other tools. Most studies focus on individual lysins or domains, overlooking adjacent full-length endolysin genes. His large-scale analysis of 21k phage genomes revealed this hidden trend and a possible unrecognised lysis strategy hiding in plain sight.

The project will begin with phage AA002, which infects Staphylococcus hominis, a contributor to human body odour. Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén will clone, express, and purify its two endolysins, assess their activity alone and in combination, and investigate synergy and complex formation. Structural modelling will provide mechanistic insight. In parallel, he will mine publicly available phage genomes to identify additional dual-endolysin systems and prioritise further candidates for testing on skin-associated bacteria under skin-like conditions.

This study will define a novel category of cooperative phage lytic enzymes, offering insights into phage genome organisation and enzyme evolution. Beyond fundamental discovery, these enzymes could serve as precise, microbiome-friendly actives for non-antibiotic applications such as next-generation deodorants.

Grant category: Serendipity Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

“Stretch-mediated tissue expansion” is used to grow extra skin during breast reconstruction. A mouse model mimicking this clinical process was used to unravel fibroblast-epithelial crosstalk supporting keratinocyte self-renewal. Unexpectedly, the research project found that stretching alters gene expression in Schwann cells, which support nerve function, and reduces touch sensitivity. However, how stretching impacts skin nerves and sensation remains unclear. In light of this serendipitous discovery, the project now plans to investigate how Schwann cells contribute to the regeneration and re-innervation of peripheral sensory neurons in stretched skin.

The new research project – SkinSense – will explore how stretching affects peripheral sensory neurons and Schwann cells, which are key to skin sensation. Single-cell transcriptomics and high-resolution imaging will be used to study how peripheral sensory neurons are affected in terms of structure, function, and repair. Based on these findings, gene therapy approaches using adeno-associated viruses will be tested to restore nerve function and recover skin sensation.

Loss of skin sensitivity after breast reconstruction can greatly affect the quality of life of women. Yet, the reasons behind this sensory loss are not well understood. SkinSense aims to uncover the biological causes of this dysfunction and test ways to restore sensation. This research could lead to new treatments that improve sensory outcomes for patients undergoing reconstructive surgery.