Grant geography: Sweden

Grant category: LEO Foundation Awards

Year: 2020

Geography: Sweden

Ning Xu Landén is an Associate Professor in experimental dermatology and venereology at the Department of Medicine, Solna at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden where she leads a successful research group. She is the author of around 50 scientific articles with more than 3000 citations.

Ning Xu Landén receives the award in recognition of her high impact research in wound healing.

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Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2019

Geography: Sweden

Skin is the largest human organ and contains an intricate variety of cell types that assure tissue architecture and proper skin function, such as thermoregulation and hair growth.

An imbalance of cell types and/or molecular signalling often results in disease. Across the body, skin composition differs in thickness, hair growth, sebaceous and sweat gland density, microbiota exposure and disease susceptibility.

However, a molecular understanding of how cell types and genetic programs vary with skin regions, and molecular alterations in disease, is currently lacking.

Previously, my lab pioneered the use of single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) in mouse skin by generating a comprehensive molecular and spatial atlas of epithelial and mesenchymal cells during hair growth and rest (Joost et al. 2016; Joost et al. 2019). Building upon our expertise, we will molecularly dissect human skin, initially through a body map that spans various body sites of healthy donors, to identify cell types and sub types in human skin and also to investigate important cell type differences and alterations compared to mouse skin. Subsequently, the body map will be the foundation for molecular analyses of skin diseases, including immune-triggered psoriasis.

A carefully constructed and annotated human skin atlas, with spatial and molecular precision, would have enormous value for the scientific community and propel our molecular understanding of skin in health and disease.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Awards

Year: 2017

Geography: Sweden

The Gold Award went to Dr. Maria Kasper, presently leading a research group at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Awards

Year: 2010

Geography: Sweden

Presented to Dr. Andor Pivarcsi, young dermatology researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden for his investigation of the role of microRNAs (miRNA) in skin disease.

Dr.Pivarsci’s work centres on miRNAs, a class of recently discovered small RNA molecules, shown to play a critical role in controlling genes behaviour. His research is expected to contribute significantly to our understanding of the pathological mechanisms in skin diseases, such as psoriasis and cancer.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Awards

Year: 2008

Geography: Sweden

Presented to Swedish researcher Lars Norlén. Norlén and his team develop new advanced biophysical measuring methods to describe the molecular structure of the skin barrier.

The frontline research of Lars Norlén will contribute to our fundamental understanding of how drugs impact and interact with their target proteins in connection with the treatment of diseases such as psoriasis. Dr. Norlén holds an MD from Karolinska Institutet, and is a group manager for biophysical dermatology at Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden. He has worked at universities in Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland, and co-authored more than 25 original articles and several book chapters.