“I want to uncover research findings that surprise me”

9 September 2024

This year’s winner of the prestigious LEO Foundation Award in Region EMEA, Dr. Claire Higgins, has all the qualities of an outstanding scientist within her field. Her work focuses on achieving scarless wound healing in human skin by studying the human hair follicle and understanding how it can be used as a model system for skin healing. In this interview, the well-deserving recipient of the award talks about her academic focus and her fascination with skin.

Dr. Claire Higgins from the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London in the UK is the winner of the LEO Foundation Award in Region EMEA 2024. Claire receives the award – worth USD 100,000 – in recognition of her impressive academic achievements and her remarkable leadership within her research group and to future generations of skin scientists.

What is your academic focus?

My lab studies human skin. We try to understand how the skin repairs itself after injury, not just at the level of the skin surface but also under the surface. For example, we investigate how nerves and blood vessels repopulate the skin after injury and whether we can modulate this process in any way.

We are also interested in the functionality of scarred skin. The hair follicle is pretty unique as it regenerates without scarring. In my lab we use the hair follicle as a source of inspiration to study scarless healing, with the goal of applying this knowledge to try to promote scarless healing in the skin.

What has been the most surprising finding of your research so far?

Last year, we had an intriguing discovery and showed that skin and hair follicle cells can release mood-regulating neurotransmitters, which in turn activated adjacent sensory neurons. While these sensory neurons usually process mechanical stimulation or light touch, we don’t believe this is why the skin and hair cells release the neurotransmitters. We are now working to identify why the skin and hair release these neurotransmitters and what their role is within the skin.

What fascinates you about the skin?

Everything! We are continually learning new things about the skin. I love how your skin, as the external covering of your body, can reflect changes to your internal health. For example, if you are stressed this can lead to neuroinflammation and changes which are visible in your skin.  I find the whole concept that your skin health can reflect internal health fascinating.

How did you get into skin research?

When I was an undergraduate, I attended lectures on skin development. These lectures described experiments from the 1960s and 1970s, where researchers combined tissue from the different layers of the skin at different developmental time points and from different body sites to determine the order of signaling between tissues that regulated skin development.  I found this style of research fascinating.

You run Higgins Lab at the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London as the Principal Investigator. Can you please tell us about your research group?

My group is diverse and currently contains two postdocs, one research assistant and six PhD students. Everyone has their own research project rangingfrom diagnostics for scleroderma, to evolution of hair. The one thing that everyone has in common is that we all work on human skin as opposed to other species.

What is your vision for your future research?

The skin is the interface between our bodies and the external world. While changes in our internal health are reflected in our skin, the external environment can also impact our internal health. We aim to better understand the interconnection between our skin and bodies, so we can modulate or exploit these findings to improve skin and overall health.

What do you aim to do with your research?

I want to uncover research findings that surprise me. New discoveries that I hadn’t even thought about or imagined before we started down a specific research avenue. Ultimately, we want our work to be translational and so I want to be inspired by this new knowledge on skin functionality, to develop strategies to improve skin health. 

About the award 

The LEO Foundation Award – worth USD 100,000 – recognizes outstanding young researchers and scientists from around the world whose work represents an extraordinary contribution to skin research and has the potential to pave the way for new and improved treatments for skin diseases. 

The award is given three times annually, one in each of the three regions: the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. It is granted in open competition with all award applications being evaluated by an independent and international Global Review Panel. The panel members are appointed annually by their respective dermatology societies in the three regions.