Explore our grantees and awardees

Grant category: Research Networking

Year: 2025

Geography: United Kingdom

Body-focused repetitive behaviours (BFRBs), such as hair-pulling, skin-picking and nail-biting are common. Around 5% of people experience repeated urges that can cause serious physical and emotional distress. Despite this, BFRBs are poorly understood, often dismissed, and rarely recognised in healthcare, leaving many without support. New research shows that BFRBs may be driven by interactions between the skin, brain and immune system, linking them to conditions like chronic itch. To address this gap, we will hold an international conference in 2026, bringing together scientists, clinicians and people with lived experience. The event will explore why these behaviours develop, how they are best managed, and how policy and practice can be improved. Alongside the scientific programme, a community day run by BFRB UK & Ireland will provide education and safe spaces for sharing experiences. The conference will raise awareness, spark collaborations and strengthen support for those affected.

Grant category: Research Networking

Year: 2025

Geography: United Kingdom

The skin is our largest organ, and it is susceptible to a wide range of diseases. While we know that our genes play a crucial role in determining our risk for these diseases, we still have much to learn about which specific genes are involved and how they contribute to disease development. In recent years, there have been groundbreaking developments in skin research that have expanded the possibilities to investigate skin cells and changes in genes and proteins. This event will bring together the world’s leading experts in skin genetics with scientists who are experts in understanding how genes work in the skin by pioneering new technologies.

The goal of this meeting, to be held in conjunction with the ESDR 2026 conference, is to spark new collaborations and share knowledge of datasets and methodologies, which will help us translate genetic discoveries into a better understanding of skin diseases and, ultimately, into new and more effective treatments.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: United Kingdom

Discoid lupus (DLE) is an autoimmune disease giving rise to disfiguring facial lesions, with limited drug options. DLE lesions contain dense accumulations of B and T lymphocytes, but the reasons they develop, persist and recur is currently unknown. DLE’s systemic counterpart, SLE, affects many organs throughout the body. We can utilise the overlap between these related conditions to ask whether similar mechanisms might operate in both DLE and SLE. In systemic lupus, engagement between co-stimulatory molecules on the T and B cell surface drives B cell survival and produces a co-stimulatory effect. We will investigate whether a similar mechanism operates in lesion-resident B cells to promote lesion persistence and identify the cell surface molecules implicated. We will discover whether specific immune cofactors in the skin prevent cessation of the costimulatory signal. If successful, blocking co-stimulatory signals on B cells from DLE may provide the basis of future drug discovery.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: United Kingdom

Fungal skin infections affect up to a quarter of people worldwide. They can also recur, spread and become life-threatening, especially in immunocompromised patients. This shows that our immune system does not always develop lasting and efficient protection. In particular, we don’t know why protective immune memory works so well against viruses but fails against fungi. Our project will study how special immune cells called T cells respond to fungal infections in the skin. By following patients with fungal skin infections over time, and comparing skin and blood samples, we will track how these immune cells are generated, maintained, or lost and what molecular weapons they use to fight the infection. We will use state-of-the-art and unique methodologies from our laboratory, allowing in-depth analysis of millions of T cells simultaneously at single-cell resolution. These insights could reveal new ways to strengthen our natural defenses and lay the foundation for future therapies.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: United Kingdom

The normal healthy functions of our skin significantly decline with age, and these changes increase the risk of infection, chronic wounds, inflammatory diseases, and cancer. Therefore, understanding the biological mechanisms underlying skin ageing is essential to protect against age-related diseases and maintain healthy skin function. The aim of this project is to dissect the cellular, biochemical, and mechanical processes of skin ageing and to directly test how they impact key functions, including tissue homeostasis and immunity. We will take advantage of state-of-the-art imaging and genomic methods available within our institution to profile the ageing process, and advanced 3D culture models of human skin will be used to test key genes and biochemical pathways. The results will provide fundamental insights into human skin ageing, and over the long term, they have the potential to identify key therapeutic targets for counteracting or preventing age-related skin diseases.

Grant category: Serendipity Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: United Kingdom

Skin fibrosis is often a sequela of suboptimal wound healing following significant epidermal and/or dermal injury (burns, trauma, major surgeries). Fibrotic material replaces native skin with dense, non-functional connective tissue, ultimately resulting in loss of function and – in the most severe cases – leading to debilitating skin pathologies that limit movement and prevent patient reintegration into society. Ferreira’s lab hosts the only colony of spiny mouse in the UK (Acomys cahirinus). The spiny is, to date, the only mammal capable of completely regenerating skin wounds with minimal scarring following self-amputation. Sofia Ferreira Gonzalez is currently exploring the contribution of different dermal populations to this fibrosis-free wound healing.

Unexpectedly, Sofia Ferreira Gonzalez and colleagues found that spiny dermal fibroblasts have a highly plastic phenotype and are able to convert to many other cell types (neurons, myocytes, chondrocytes). Moreover, they found that spiny fibroblasts secrete factors that enhance migration and proliferation of human dermal fibroblasts and protect them from cellular senescence. Sofia Ferreira Gonzalez aims now to explore these results, defining which mechanisms drive plasticity, migration and proliferation in spiny fibroblasts and adapting them to human fibroblasts. By doing so, Sofia Ferreira Gonzalez aims to establish a radically new approach to skin trauma focused on stimulating tissue regeneration rather than suppressing fibrosis, which has the potential to revolutionize both care and patient outcomes.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: United Kingdom

Medicated creams and ointments are used to treat millions of people every day. Despite this, inconsistent drug delivery remains a long-standing issue. While Finlay’s Fingertip Unit was introduced in 1973 to address this gap, there is still a challenge in delivering consistent doses of topical medicines for small lesions, such as those seen in paediatrics. This issue is particularly relevant today with the introduction of incredibly potent topical medicines. Oisín Kavanagh’s project aims to design an adjustable adapter that enables patients to accurately control the amount of medication they apply to their skin. During the design process, Oisín Kavanagh and his team will collaborate with patients and their carers to ensure that this product meets their needs.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: United Kingdom

Skin innervation is our sensory interface with the ever-changing environment undergoing fluctuations in temperature and humidity. Sensation needs to account for these fluctuations to regulate sense of touch, pain, movement, learning and memory, sexual and social conduct. More than 100 million bacteria that reside on the human skin are the first line of response to environmental perturbations. Variable humidity, salinity, temperature, and oxygen affect bacteria metabolism and diversity. Simone Di Giovanni therefore hypothesise that bacteria are required for sensory function affecting complex behaviours in response to perturbations in temperature and humidity. This bears implications for human physiology, health and resilience on earth.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: United Kingdom

Clare Bennett’s project explores the skin’s sensory nerves. These protect us from harm, such as heat or toxins, yet little is known about how they are sustained. Psoriasis is a common disfiguring skin condition, where pain suffered by patients and its impact on mental health and quality of life are frequently overlooked. Understanding how sensory nerves are protected in healthy skin could reveal why this process fails in psoriasis, leading to pain. Langerhans cells (LCs), immune cells in the skin’s epidermis, are known for detecting infections. However, emerging evidence suggests that LCs may also perform non-immune roles that have not been thoroughly studied. This project aims to investigate how psoriasis changes the way LCs interact with the nerves in the skin. Clare Bennett and her team hypothesize that changes in psoriatic skin disrupt protective function, leading to uncontrolled nerve growth. Clare Bennett and her team combine expertise in immunology, neuroscience, and dermatology. They will use advanced microscopy, genetic models, and gene expression analysis in well-established lab models to study LC-nerve interactions and aim to validate their findings using psoriasis patient skin samples. The results of Clare Bennett’s project could fill critical gaps in our understanding of sensory nerve regulation. Ultimately, the hope is to uncover new strategies to reduce pain and improve quality of life for psoriasis patients and potentially those with other skin diseases.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: United Kingdom

This project concerns establishing a consortium for research in the genetics of skin diseases, which are the 4th leading cause of disability globally. Lavinia Paternoster and the group behind the Skin Genetic Consortium (SGC) will use population-scale genomic datasets from across the globe to conduct well-powered human genetic studies to discover disease mechanisms, identify and prioritize drug targets, and improve the accuracy and utility of skin disease diagnoses for epidemiological research. Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the number and diversity of population biobanks across the globe. The SGC will leverage these resources to undertake genome-wide association studies for an extensive set of skin conditions. Sample sizes in excess of 4 million will increase power for gene discovery in many previously understudied skin conditions. Furthermore, cross-disease analyses will be performed to identify shared disease mechanisms, potentially revealing drug re-purposing opportunities. The SGC brings together experts in genetic epidemiology, clinical dermatology and cohort custodians. This first phase of the SGC will uncover key biological insights and drug target evidence for an initial set of common skin conditions.

The project aims to generate a platform for uploading and harmonizing data, performing streamlined genetic analysis and open distribution of results. With further funding the SGC will expand to increase participant diversity, extend analyses to rare variants and generate additional molecular functional genomics data for experimental validation and clinical translation of results.