Grant geography: USA

Grant category: Research Networking

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

The 18th International Workshop of Langerhans Cells and Related Myeloid Cells in the Skin will take place on September 3–5, 2025, at Washington University in St. Louis. This global scientific meeting brings together researchers to explore the biology and interaction of immune cells in the skin – how they protect us, how they contribute to diseases like eczema, psoriasis, and skin cancer, and how they can be targeted for new treatments. The workshop fosters discovery, collaboration, and innovation in skin science, with talks by leading scientists, and early-career researchers, males and females from around the world. Read more information here.

Grant category: Research Networking

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

The 72nd Annual Montagna Symposium will be held October 16th-20th on the Oregon Coast. The symposium will focus on emerging paradigms in personalized medicine.

Population studies have raised questions about why individuals do not respond to established therapies. Patients are individuals with personalized social, behavioral, and genetic determinants, but knowledge gaps exist regarding how these determinants influence diagnosis and treatment of cutaneous diseases. The goal is to highlight emerging avenues of investigation and streamline their incorporation into clinical medicine.

This event is designed for senior and junior level leaders in the field: scientists, dermatology clinicians, clinical, translational and basic science researchers, and trainees. The format includes lectures, discussions, and many networking opportunities which enable interaction between new and established scientists and dermatologists. Visit the website for the program and registration.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

Pyoderma gangrenosum (PG) is a rare skin disease. Patients with PG have defects in their skin wound healing responses. Even minor injuries and cuts to the skin can form large chronic ulcers. PG ulcers are enriched with neutrophils, an immune cell type that plays a vital role in skin wound healing. Typically, neutrophils travel to the skin right after an injury, perform their tasks, and leave within a period of 3 days. Samreen Jatana wants to understand why PG neutrophils don’t perform their regular tasks and impair wound healing in skin. Samreen Jatana and her colleagues analyzed peripheral blood from patients with PG and identified a type of neutrophil in circulation with features of immature neutrophils that typically live in the bone marrow. They anticipate that this neutrophil subset cannot utilize energy properly and might be exhausted to perform its function. In this project, they will study this neutrophil subset to understand if it can be targeted therapeutically to treat PG.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

Keloids are raised, inflamed scars that grow beyond the original wound, often becoming painful and disfiguring. They disproportionately affect African American, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian individuals, yet the biological reasons behind their formation remain unclear. Current treatments are limited, with high recurrence rates. George Agak’s research aims to uncover the molecular drivers of keloids by studying skin cells from keloid-prone individuals at the single-cell level. George Agak and his team focus on a key signaling pathway, the ACE-ASPN axis, which appears to promote inflammation and excessive scar formation. By using cutting-edge technologies like scRNA-seq, spatial-seq and advanced machine-learning tools, they will map how keloids develop across diverse skin types. Additionally, they will test whether angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs)—drugs already used for high blood pressure—can reduce keloid growth. The goal is to identify targeted treatments, leading to personalized therapies for those most affected.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

Sclerodermatous chronic graft-versus-host disease is a common, debilitating side effect that can develop in patients who have undergone hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for blood cancer. It is challenging to treat and usually requires medications that suppress the immune system. One of the biggest challenges in treating patients with cGVHD is the lack of an accurate informative way for doctors to know if the skin is responding to therapy or is getting worse. In this project, Adela Cardones will use novel ultrasound technologies to measure changes in skin stiffness among cGVHD patients over a 1-year period. Adela Cardona and her team will compare this with using traditional clinical assessment, patient reported symptoms, and blood and skin markers of inflammation. If successful, this will allow them to better detect worsening or improvement of skin thickening and stiffness. This will ultimately lead to better care of patients and allow discovery of better treatments.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

Leprosy remains a major public health challenge, with treatment becoming harder as drug-resistant Mycobacterium leprae strains emerge. While resistance is often linked to known mutations, some patients fail treatment without these mutations, suggesting unknown resistance mechanisms. Since M. leprae cannot be grown in a lab, Charlotte Avanzi studies it in living models to understand how genetic variations affect drug response. Charlotte Avanzi and her team have collected a large dataset of resistant strains studied in mice, revealing differences in growth and treatment response. Next, they will analyze their genomes to identify the genetic basis of these differences. Additionally, they will investigate genetic variations in M. leprae strains without known resistance but with distinct growth patterns. By uncovering hidden resistance mechanisms and genetic diversity, they aim to improve diagnostics, refine treatments, and guide future drug regimens, ensuring effective leprosy control worldwide.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

There are currently almost 40 million people globally living with HIV (PLWH) and they face life-threatening allergic skin reactions to medications up to 100 times more often than the general population, yet these conditions remain poorly understood – especially in those with darker skin. Elizabeth Phillips will use a biorepository with samples from more than 500 cases of severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCAR) to create a detailed HIV skin immune atlas. Using single-cell sequencing and spatial mapping, Elizabeth Phillips and her team will develop understanding at a single cell level of how HIV alters skin immunity in both healthy and inflamed skin and its role in driving SCAR such as drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (DRESS) and Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis (EN). They will identify new ways to diagnose, treat, or prevent SCAR. The project will improve HIV, allergy, and dermatology care while highlighting Africa’s critical role in global health innovation.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

Skin pathology in Scleroderma (SSc) involves activated and senescent myofibroblast accumulation, yet their mechanistic role remains unclear, and effective treatments are lacking. Intestinal microorganisms influence SSc pathogenesis, with altered homeostasis and function in patients. These microorganisms produce the pungent trimethylamine (TMA), which is then converted to trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) via an enzymatic reaction catalyzed by hepatic flavin-like monooxygenase (FMO3). Together, these observations implicate FMO3 and the gut-TMA-TMAO axis in both fibrotic and vascular pathology in SSc; however, the pathogenic roles of FMO3 in SSc and its mechanism have never been investigated. Here Priyanka Verma will use human samples, cell cultures and animal models to test the hypothesis that FMO3 is an important player in SSc. Better understanding of the role of FMO3, and its regulation of the gut microbiome-TMAO axis in the pathogenesis of SSc could lead to innovative treatment strategies.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

Millions of people suffer from chronic skin diseases like psoriasis, vitiligo, and alopecia areata, which follow frustrating cycles of treatment, improvement, and relapse. These relapses occur because certain immune cells, called tissue-resident memory T cells, remain hidden in the skin even after symptoms disappear, ready to trigger inflammation again. Christoph Ellebrecht has discovered that these immune cells depend on highly efficient protein production to survive in the challenging, resource-limited skin environment. Christoph Ellebrecht and his team will investigate when and where this protein production efficiency becomes essential for these cells, how it helps them adapt to the skin, and test whether targeting this process can selectively eliminate these cells while preserving normal immune function outside of the skin. This research could lead to new treatments that provide long-lasting remission for chronic inflammatory skin diseases, significantly improving quality of life for millions of patients worldwide.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

Valerie Horsley’s project will investigate how lipids and adipocyte-derived molecules suppress fibroblast production of proteins that cause fibrosis. Valerie and her team found that adipocytes release lipids during fibrosis and that this prevents fibrosis development. Their work will identify functional mechanisms that can be targeted for future therapies for skin fibrosis, a debilitating and deadly disorder that lacks any current therapies.