From top left: Ning Xu Landén, Itziar Martinez Gonzalez, Beth Mclellan, Clare Bennett, Tim Stinear and Erin Chen
22 September 2026
Six researchers receive nearly DKK 20 million (EUR 2.7 million) from the LEO Foundation to pursue unexpected scientific discoveries – from a surprising connection between the nose and the skin to a potential new way of detecting melanoma from nail clippings.
Sometimes research takes an unexpected turn. An experiment produces a surprising result, an observation does not fit the original hypothesis – or something initially considered irrelevant turns out to hold scientific potential.
The LEO Foundation’s Serendipity Grants give researchers who already hold a research grant from the Foundation the opportunity to pursue unexpected findings that emerge along the way.
In the latest round, six researchers from the US, UK, Sweden and Australia have received a total of DKK 20 million to explore promising discoveries that were not part of their original research plans.
From the nose to the skin
The six projects have emerged from very different starting points.
Assistant Professor Erin Chen from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, USA, discovered that bacteria colonizing the nose may influence immune responses in the skin. Her project will now investigate whether this previously unknown nose-skin connection plays a role in regulating skin inflammation and immune tolerance.
Professor Beth McLellan from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, USA, made a different kind of unexpected discovery. While studying the skin microbiome, her team found that ordinary nail clippings contain human genetic material that may provide information about disease beneath the nail.
With a Serendipity Grant, the team will investigate whether this finding can be developed into a non-invasive tool to help identify patients who may have melanoma beneath the nail, potentially reducing the need for invasive biopsies.
New questions about wounds, allergy and pain
Other projects will explore unexpected findings related to wound healing, chronic allergic inflammation and neuropathic pain.
Associate Professor Ning Xu Landén from Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, will investigate indications that differences in wound healing between men and women may involve more than hormones.
At the same university, Assistant Professor Itziar Martinez Gonzalez will explore a surprising link between chronic allergic inflammation and ageing processes in stem cells in the bone marrow, responsible for blood coagulation.
Professor Clare Bennett from University College London, England, will investigate what happens when damaged sensory nerves in the skin grow back along the wrong pathways – and whether this abnormal rewiring may contribute to chronic pain in e.g. inflammatory skin disease patients.
Finally, Principal Research Fellow Tim Stinear from the University of Melbourne, Australia, will pursue the unexpected discovery of a virus capable of killing the bacterium that causes Buruli ulcer. The project will investigate its potential as a highly targeted treatment for the neglected tropical skin disease.
Giving unexpected discoveries a chance
Scientific discoveries do not always follow the path researchers originally set out to explore. The Serendipity Grants are designed to make room for promising findings that arise along the way and fall outside the scope of an existing LEO Foundation-funded project.
“Some of the most interesting discoveries in science happen when researchers find something they did not expect. With our Serendipity Grants, we want to give researchers the opportunity to follow these surprising findings and explore whether they can open new paths in skin research,” says Anne-Marie Engel, Chief Scientific Officer at the LEO Foundation.
Together, the six new projects receive DKK 19,964,515 to investigate where their unexpected observations may lead.
Read more about the six Serendipity Grant projects here.