Explore our grantees and awardees

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2026

Geography: Switzerland

Skin diseases such as mastocytosis, chronic hives, and atopic dermatitis involve immune cells called mast cells (MCs) and affect much people. Such conditions severely reduce quality of life, and many patients do not respond well to existing treatments. A major reason for the slow development of better therapies is that research still relies on animal models, which do not fully reflect human skin biology, or on limited patient samples. This project aims to address this problem by developing the first fully human, scaffold-free skin model that contains functional MCs. This innovative model closely mimics natural human skin and allows researchers to study how MCs cause inflammation and damage the skin barrier under realistic conditions. It will enable testing of new treatments directly in a human-based system, reducing the need for animal experiments. This project will improve our understanding of MC-driven skin diseases and help accelerate the discovery of better therapies for patients.

Grant category: Research Networking

Year: 2025

Geography: Switzerland

The SKINTEGRITY 2027 conference will take place from January 28-30, 2027, in Davos, Switzerland, to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the collaborative research consortium SKINTEGRITY.CH. It brings together basic scientists, clinicians and engineers from academia or industry, whose work helps to understand, diagnose and treat poorly healing wounds, inflammatory skin diseases and skin cancer. It will feature presentations from world leaders in these fields as well as shorter presentations, which will mainly be given by early career researchers. Additional research highlights will be presented in the form of a poster. This international and interdisciplinary conference will promote collaborations across disciplines, educate the next generation of skin researchers and clinical dermatologists, rheumatologists and surgeons, and will help to turn new scientific discoveries into better diagnostic approaches and treatments for patients.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Switzerland

Treatments for chronic inflammatory skin diseases rely on immunosuppression, which can increase infection risk and can fail to fully control disease. Keratinocytes of the epidermal barrier also actively drive inflammation. A protein family called the Gasdermins may play a key role in mediating release of inflammatory mediators from cells by forming pores in the cell membrane. At very high activity this kills the cell, but at lower activity these pores may allow controlled release of inflammatory signals, shaping communication between skin cells and immune cells.

This project will investigate:

1. How keratinocytes use Gasdermins for signaling without dying.

2. How chemical modifications fine-tune Gasdermin activity.

3. How these processes are altered in chronic inflammatory diseases, such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis.

By identifying targets and biomarkers, this research could pave the way for new therapeutic avenues of exploration for inflammatory skin diseases.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Switzerland

Chronic wounds or hypertrophic scars affect a large percentage of the population world-wide, but the therapeutic options are still limited. The development of innovative wound therapeutics requires a thorough understanding of the mechanisms underlying normal and impaired healing. This project will study a new regulatory mechanism in wound healing – the transfer of metabolically highly active cell organelles (mitochondria) between different cell types and the functional consequences for wound healing. We will use state-of-the art cell culture and mouse models to determine if mitochondrial transfer has beneficial effects on recipient cells and if this promotes the wound healing process. Through collaboration with clinical partners, we will determine the importance of our findings for normal and impaired healing in humans. The results will pave the way for the development of new wound therapeutics that target mitochondrial transfer or proteins regulated by this process.

Grant category: Research Networking

Year: 2025

Geography: Switzerland

The EI Cure Project and EI Cure Project Research Alliance will host a 2-day symposium dedicated entirely to rare genetic skin disease Epidermolytic Ichthyosis. The symposium will be held at the Zurich Careum, Switzerland from March 19th to 20^th. The full-day presentations, for interested individuals and coming researchers, include the following themes:

• Patient and Parent Perspectives
• Clinical Classifications and Current Care
• Proteomics and Drug-Repurposing
• Gene-Editing Research Updates

Grant category: Research Networking

Year: 2025

Geography: Switzerland

ESDR Future Leaders Academy, a 3-day event from 6.-8. November 2025 held in Nice with the theme ’Excellence in skin science, future is ours’. The goal of this initiative is to foster excellence in academic dermatology and encourage gifted young dermatologists to further pursue their careers through guidance and mentoring. The program is primarily open to European residents currently engaged in skin-related research (MD, PhD, Post-Doc). There will be 25 applicants who will be selected to present their current research, along with 7 mentors who will make a more personal and inspiring presentation. Besides scientific sessions there is a strong emphasis on encouraging young people to network and to exchange ideas during the academy.

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Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Switzerland

Inflammatory skin diseases such as atopic dermatitis and psoriasis are debilitating and chronic conditions characterised by the appearance of rashes and scaly plaques. The symptoms are caused by overactivation of the immune system in which T cells play a key role. Current treatments are known to suppress the entire immune system or target pathways required for appropriate immunity and therefore are associated with significant risks for infections and cancer. Jean Pieters and his laboratory has recently defined a pathway that is selectively involved in T cell-mediated inflammatory skin disorders while being dispensable for normal immunity. Within this project Jean Pieters and his team aims to investigate the molecular mechanisms involved, and explore the potential of targeting this pathway as a therapeutic strategy for the suppression of skin inflammation while maintaining overall immunity. The results from this work may allow the delineation of hitherto unexplored and steroid-sparing therapies for inflammatory skin disorders.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: Switzerland

Christoph Schlapbach’s project aims to elucidate the role of interleukin (IL-)18 in atopic dermatitis (AD), a prevalent, chronic skin disease with significant burden and unmet therapeutic needs.

IL-18 is linked to AD pathogenesis by multiple lines of evidence: IL-18 receptor (IL-18R) gene variants associate with AD susceptibility, IL-18 levels correlate with disease severity, and animal models of AD suggest a pro-inflammatory function of IL-18 in type 2 skin inflammation. Yet, the functional link between IL-18, considered a Th1-promoting cytokine, and AD, a Th2-driven disease, remains obscure. Christoph Schlapbach’s preliminary data now indicate that (i) there is a functional link between AD-associated IL18R gene variants and heightened Th2-cell responses, (ii) IL-18 can promote secretion of pathogenic cytokines in Th2 cells of AD patients, and (iii) skin explants from lesional AD skin can be used to model the effects of IL-18 in the complex environment of human skin.

Christoph Sclapbach’s project will leverage genotype-phenotype-function studies in a translational approach to dissect the mechanisms by which IL-18 influences Th2 cell-mediated inflammation in AD. Utilizing state-of-the-art methodology and functional validation experiments, the study aims to clarify IL-18’s role in AD pathogenesis to answer this long-standing conundrum in the fields of dermatology and immunology.

The results of Christoph Schlapbach’s project may provide a new understanding of IL-18’s role in AD, potentially enabling improved treatment.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: Switzerland

Lukas Sommer’s project explores the mechanisms mediating the role of repair glia in skin wound healing by means of genetically engineered mouse models and an organotypic 3D culture system of human skin wounds.

Inefficient skin wound healing can cause severe medical problems, including chronic wounds and ulcers. Innervation is a critical player in tissue regeneration and repair. While most studies have linked this effect to signaling from axons, there is increasing evidence for peripheral glia contributing to successful wound healing. Lukas Sommer’s laboratory has recently shown that peripheral glia following skin injury to become repair glia, which promote the wound healing process by paracrine signaling. In his project, single cell RNA sequencing on the cellular microenvironment in presence or absence of repair glia at defined timepoints after skin injury will be performed and complemented with spatial omics approaches to characterize the gene expression profile of repair glia and to identify their mode of intercellular communications with other skin cell types. Multiplex optical imaging approaches on biopsies of murine and human skin lesions will allow the investigation of the relevance of our findings in human skin diseases. Finally, functional validation of key candidate factors in mice and in 3D reconstituted human skin wounds will determine how repair glia promote the wound healing process and which signaling pathways could potentially represent targets for treatment.

Lukas Sommer’s project therefore aims to enhance our understanding of wound healing mechanisms with potential broad applications in medicine.

Grant category: Research Networking

Year: 2024

Geography: Switzerland

The 2024 ESDR Academy for Future Leaders in Dermatology entitled “Translational innovation in dermatology” will be held 10-12 October 2024 in Uppsala, Sweden. The goal of this initiative is to foster excellence in academic dermatology and encourage gifted young dermatologists to further pursue their careers through guidance and mentoring. The program is primarily open to European residents currently engaged in skin-related research (MD, PhD, Post-Doc). The selected applicants will give oral presentation of their work and current research. The program will be completed by talks from selected senior scientists, from Future Leaders alumni serving as mentors and from guest speakers. Besides scientific sessions there is a strong emphasis on encouraging young people to network and to exchange ideas.

More information: https://esdrmeeting.org/