Explore our grantees and awardees

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

There are currently almost 40 million people globally living with HIV (PLWH) and they face life-threatening allergic skin reactions to medications up to 100 times more often than the general population, yet these conditions remain poorly understood – especially in those with darker skin. Elizabeth Phillips will use a biorepository with samples from more than 500 cases of severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCAR) to create a detailed HIV skin immune atlas. Using single-cell sequencing and spatial mapping, Elizabeth Phillips and her team will develop understanding at a single cell level of how HIV alters skin immunity in both healthy and inflamed skin and its role in driving SCAR such as drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS) and Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis (EN). They will identify new ways to diagnose, treat, or prevent SCAR. The project will improve HIV, allergy, and dermatology care while highlighting Africa’s critical role in global health innovation.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

Skin pathology in Scleroderma (SSc) involves activated and senescent myofibroblast accumulation, yet their mechanistic role remains unclear, and effective treatments are lacking. Intestinal microorganisms influence SSc pathogenesis, with altered homeostasis and function in patients. These microorganisms produce the pungent trimethylamine (TMA), which is then converted to trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) via an enzymatic reaction catalyzed by hepatic flavin-like monooxygenase (FMO3). Together, these observations implicate FMO3 and the gut-TMA-TMAO axis in both fibrotic and vascular pathology in SSc; however, the pathogenic roles of FMO3 in SSc and its mechanism have never been investigated. Here Priyanka Verma will use human samples, cell cultures and animal models to test the hypothesis that FMO3 is an important player in SSc. Better understanding of the role of FMO3, and its regulation of the gut microbiome-TMAO axis in the pathogenesis of SSc could lead to innovative treatment strategies.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

Millions of people suffer from chronic skin diseases like psoriasis, vitiligo, and alopecia areata, which follow frustrating cycles of treatment, improvement, and relapse. These relapses occur because certain immune cells, called tissue-resident memory T cells, remain hidden in the skin even after symptoms disappear, ready to trigger inflammation again. Christoph Ellebrecht has discovered that these immune cells depend on highly efficient protein production to survive in the challenging, resource-limited skin environment. Christoph Ellebrecht and his team will investigate when and where this protein production efficiency becomes essential for these cells, how it helps them adapt to the skin, and test whether targeting this process can selectively eliminate these cells while preserving normal immune function outside of the skin. This research could lead to new treatments that provide long-lasting remission for chronic inflammatory skin diseases, significantly improving quality of life for millions of patients worldwide.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

Valerie Horsley’s project will investigate how lipids and adipocyte-derived molecules suppress fibroblast production of proteins that cause fibrosis. Valerie and her team found that adipocytes release lipids during fibrosis and that this prevents fibrosis development. Their work will identify functional mechanisms that can be targeted for future therapies for skin fibrosis, a debilitating and deadly disorder that lacks any current therapies.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

To elucidate novel mechanisms that orchestrate skin formation Alexander Marneros have focused on a genetic skin disease that manifests with scalp skin wounds at birth, aplasia cutis congenita (ACC). Alexander and his team found that the genes KCTD1 and KCTD15 are mutated in patients with ACC. These genes form a complex that inhibits the activity of AP-2 transcription factors. Inactivation of these genes in neural crest cells (NCCs), from which the mesenchymal cells of the midline cranial sutures are derived, results in ACC. The data provide evidence that keratinocyte growth factors are secreted by these mesenchymal cells to promote the formation of the overlying epidermis. A key open question is now to understand the precise pathomechanisms that are downstream of this KCTD1/KCTD15 – AP-2 signaling axis, which Alexander and the team will explore in this proposal. These experiments are expected to provide exciting new insights into how skin formation is controlled, which likely has important clinical relevance for multiple skin diseases.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

Staphylococcus aureus is the primary cause of skin infections and is a serious public health threat due to the emergence of antimicrobial-resistant strains as well as the failure of all vaccine clinical trials to date. Thus, there is an unmet need for new therapeutic strategies as alternatives to antibiotics and vaccines. Nathan Archer’s proposal aims to solve this problem by interrogating how our immune cells orchestrate protective responses against S. aureus infections. Specifically, Nathan and his team discovered that the amino acid, glutamine, is critical for host defense against S. aureus in the skin. They will use advanced “omics” approaches to understand how glutamine promotes host defense in specific immune cells in the skin using preclinical infection models as well as clinically infected skin. The goal of this study is to identify previously unrecognized immune pathways that can be targeted to augment host immunity against antimicrobial-resistant S. aureus and potentially other skin pathogens.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

Tiffany Scharschmidts seek to understand how CD4+ T cells adapt to and survive in the skin. These cells are crucial for maintaining skin health but also drive diseases like atopic dermatitis and psoriasis. Despite this, we have much still to learn about the biology of CD4+ T cells residing in skin. To fill this gap, Tiffany and her team will use advanced single-cell techniques to study the metabolism of CD4+ T cells in both mouse and human skin. Preliminary data suggest these cells rely on glycolysis, and they aim to explore this further and identify other important metabolic pathways. In the first part of the study, they will use innovative mouse models and CRISPR-Cas9 technology to pinpoint key metabolic needs and regulators. In the second part, they will extend their findings to human skin, examining CD4+ T cells in both healthy and diseased states. The goal is to uncover how metabolism influences skin immune function, which could lead to new treatments for chronic inflammatory skin diseases.