Explore our grantees and awardees

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2018

Geography: USA

Androgenetic alopecia (AGA, Male or Female Pattern Baldness) is the most common type of hair loss, affecting approximately 50% of men and 30% of women by the age of 50.

Current therapies, including pharmaceutical and surgical interventions, are either marginally effective or expensive with significant limitations. Over the last decade, breakthroughs made in the field of adult stem cells have laid the foundation for a cell-based approach to tissue and organ regeneration. Cell-based therapies will comprise a new wave of medical breakthroughs.

In this study we propose to produce human hair follicles from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells by directing these cells to form the two types of cells that are needed for human hair formation, namely the human hair follicle epidermal cells and the hair inductive dermal fibroblasts.

We will combine our hair biology and tissue-engineering expertise to generate early stage human hair follicles in culture that can be implanted into an animal model to grow into a mature hair. The long-term goals are to develop an innovative cell-based treatment for hair loss and an in vitro platform for testing hair growth compounds.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2018

Geography: USA

Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the world’s most common cancer and is defined by uncontrolled activation of the Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway.

Although previous studies have suggested that elevated Hh may be sufficient for BCC formation, mutations in the Notch pathway are also commonly observed. Furthermore, Notch-deficient mice are susceptible to forming BCCs, and our recent studies have shown that Notch can modulate tumor-drug response.

These studies seek to understand whether Notch affects multiple aspects of BCC tumorigenesis. Using a combination of animal studies and human BCC specimens, we will investigate how Notch modulates tumor progression and stem cell origin.

We will also model in mice a recent clinical trial, where Alzheimer’s patients treated with a Notch inhibitor reported increased incidence of BCC. We hypothesize that Notch may suppress tumorigenesis at multiple levels by controlling cell differentiation, apoptosis and turnover, similar to its function in normal skin and hair follicles.

These studies will ultimately build on the novel premise that BCCs may originate from a precursor lesion. Given that Notch mutations are the most commonly observed genetic aberrations in human skin, a deeper understanding of the tumor suppressive properties of this pathway is urgently needed.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2018

Geography: USA

My vision is to use metagenomics to better predict patient responses to immunotherapy and rationally design microbial adjuvant cocktails and engineered microbes to improve therapeutic outcomes.

However, a central question is the role of the local microbiota vs. systemic effects in potentiating these immunotherapeutics. In skin cancer, we have been studying how the skin microbiome affects predisposition and progression. Specific gut microbes have been implicated in the outcomes for immunotherapy response in melanoma skin cancer, supporting a role of systemic immune interactions via the gut in potentiating immunotherapy response.

However, because many aspects of cutaneous immunity are compartmentalized from systemic immune effects, we hypothesize that the skin microbiome could uniquely impact skin cancer outcomes during immunotherapy by modulating the cutaneous immune milieu.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2017

Geography: USA

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is the most common inflammatory skin disease, with a prevalence in adults of 3% to 10% and a large unmet need for effective therapeutics.

Current clinical trials for AD patients assume a common disease mechanism. However, based on preliminary data, different therapeutics may be required to effectively treat different subsets of AD patients.

Biomarker-based studies show distinct clinical, and particularly molecular and cellular differences between different AD subpopulations such as African American, Chinese, and Indian AD patient populations.

However the characterization of the different and distinct clinical AD phenotypes is still at its very beginning. Indeed, there is high need of appropriate mechanistic studies to create a complete “molecular map” of AD across its different variants and hence to get a step closer for a personalized treatment approach.

Dr. Emma Guttman and her team at Icahn School of Medicine at the Mount Sinai Medical Centre, NY, USA, will seek a first time investigation to provide a systems biology approach for AD aiming to produce a molecular map of AD across its different subtypes.

The project integrates cellular and molecular biomarkers of lesional, but also non-lesional, skin and systemic inflammation to classify adult AD patients based on ethnic phenotypes, disease severity and age differences.

The proposal will set the stage for personalized therapy approach for AD based on skin and blood biomarkers and pathogenic variation of AD phenotypes related to severity, race/ethnicity and age.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2017

Geography: USA

Despite decades of research, the root cause of psoriasis remains unknown and targeted approaches to cure psoriasis have to date been elusive.

Psoriasis is a physically and psychologically devastating skin disorder affecting more than 7.5 million Americans, with global prevalence ranging up to 4.6%. The disease causes profound physical, emotional, and social burdens translating into massive healthcare costs.

Theories of the biological mechanisms behind the disease range from genetic and epigenetic deviations to acquired defects involving a plethora of cellular and mechanistic culprits, including epidermal cell kinetics, endothelial-leukocyte interactions and perturbations in dermal nerve fibres, mast cells, lymphocytes and dendritic cells.

However, even if it is clear that a multiplicity of cellular pathways is involved, the primary events that initiate and drive disease remain unknown.

The team behind this study proposes a novel hypothesis that psoriasis is driven by immune-mediated dysregulation of stem cells within the epidermal and dermal compartments.

In the course of the study, the team will, for the first time, test the skin stem cell hypothesis of psoriasis causation with a highly-focused goal of defining the primary event(s) in lesion formation, thus providing a foundation for future pre-clinical targeted therapeutic approaches designed to actually cure psoriasis.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2017

Geography: USA

Many observations suggest interactions between the skin immune system and the nervous system. Psoriasis and atopic dermatitis (AD), as examples, are believed to worsen with stress.

It has furthermore been shown that denervation of areas of human skin bearing psoriasis leads to improvement or resolution of the disease – and studies on mice have shown that an intact nerve supply is necessary for development of murine psoriasiform dermatitis.

The underlying mechanisms addressed in this project revolve around the Calcitonin Gene-related Peptide (CGRP) and the use of a novel, specifically targeted murine model.

Psychological stress increases the CGRP content of cutaneous nerves and dorsal root ganglia, and the team behind the project suggests that CGRP effects on the dermal microvascular endothelial cells may, at least in part, explain stress-exacerbation of Th17-mediated skin diseases such as psoriasis.

The LEO Foundation believes that the project can provide relevant insights into the role of the nervous system in regulating skin immune responses and thus provide a rational basis for developing novel drugs for modulation of skin immune responses.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2016

Geography: USA

Atopic dermatitis (AD), or atopic eczema, is the world’s most common inflammatory skin disorder. Its prevalence has increased during the past few decades and can now be found to be more than 20% in children and 10% in adults.

For children, there is an unmet need for improved therapy for moderate to severe AD and it is likely that therapeutics with proven safety and efficacy in adults will move towards to trials in children. There are, however, when gauging the pathogenesis and characteristic biomarkers related to AD, significant differences between children and adults.

Dr. Guttmann’s study purports to shed light on these differences to enlarge the understanding of biomarkers and to clarify when children transition to the adult biomarker pattern that predicts responses. Correlating the validity of biomarkers in adults with AD vs. different age groups of children and adolescents with AD (including 5-12 and 12-17 years olds) is a critical step before engaging in large clinical trials.

Given the challenge in obtaining biopsies from children during clinical trials, defining a set of biomarkers in blood will prove extremely valuable in these large patient populations. More specifically, the study will address the following questions:

• What are the cutaneous biomarkers in AD in children and adolescents of different age groups and how do these compare with disease activity, epidermal barrier function, and known biomarkers in both infancy/early childhood and adult AD skin?
• Are there useful biomarkers in the blood of children and adolescents with AD that compare well with skin immune and barrier biomarkers, and could these enable a less invasive means to follow biomarker changes and direct skin therapy than skin biopsies?
• At what age do children acquire an “adult” AD phenotype?

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2016

Geography: Brazil, USA

The LEO Foundation has granted support to a conference on chemiexcitation in human disease to be held at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Long Island, NY. The initiative will bring together a select group of internationally renowned scientists with the goal of combining expertise from several fields to explore the ramifications of a previously unrecognized mode of disease – chemical excitation of electrons (“chemiexcitation”).

Chemiexcitation is a high-energy biophysical process that underlies bioluminescence, but it had not been observed in mammals until a finding that chemiexcitation sent melanocytes down the path to melanoma when two key enzymes were activated by ultraviolet light.

The insight driving the conference is that the same chemistry will occur wherever nitric oxide, superoxide, and melanin are present at the same time, so chemiexcitation may also be a hidden step in diseases where sunlight is not involved.

The three chemical reactants co-occur during inflammation and ischemia-reperfusion injury, so chemiexcitation may underlie skin cancers arising in burn scars and it may operate during wound healing, hypertrophic scarring, skin flap reconstructive surgery, and skin aging. The same reactants are also present in neurodegenerations such as Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s, in deafness induced by noise or drugs, and in macular degeneration.

A first outcome of the 3.5 day conference will be a white paper outlining plausible chemiexcitation pathways for the diseases or pathologic reactions as well as identifying promising avenues of scientific investigation and feasible routes to blocking chemiexcitation.

A second outcome will be a website to provide a technical foundation for new colleagues – including young scientists. Modified versions of slides from the conference will be posted, including a recollection of what is already understood in each area, and presented as a list of principles and expositions in the style of Molecular Biology of the Gene. The website will also present lists of resources and the chemistry, biology, and pathology questions that are still in need of an answer.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2016

Geography: Denmark, USA

Atopic dermatitis (AD) and hand dermatitis are heterogeneous disease entities and there has yet to be developed a good understanding of their many different clinical aspects. Thus it remains extremely challenging to provide patients with better treatment outcomes and prognosis.

A newly formed team of scientists at Gentofte Hospital in Copenhagen and Mount Sinai in New York has set out to change this.

“Next generation sequencing and advanced bioinformatics technologies give us powerful new opportunities to explore and understand the molecular pathophysiology of atopic dermatitis and hand dermatitis,” said Dr. Joel Dudley, Director of Biomedical informatics at Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai in New York.

“It is a study that has not previously been performed, and we expect to make a breakthrough in the understanding, classification and treatment of these skin diseases. We hope to improve our knowledge and understanding of the molecular basis of atopic dermatitis and hand dermatitis and their relation to clinical features. Consequently, we also hope to pave the way for improved opportunities for managing and preventing disease,” said Dr. Jeanne Duus Johansen from the Department of Dermato-Allergology at Gentofte Hospital.

She and Joel Dudley will lead a trans-Atlantic team of researchers working with high-throughput, genome-wide profiling of multiple of the ‘–omics’ modalities, including genome, transcriptome, epigenome, and microbiome.

The goal is to develop a deeper understanding of how the molecular manifestation of the heterogeneous diseases correlates with clinical variables such as onset of disease and treatment outcomes. The technologies employed by the team can provide comprehensive molecular profiles that can enhance the understanding of the system-wide mechanics and properties of complex biological systems.

Dudley’s team will integrate the ‘-omics’ data sets to clarify the complex biological mechanisms underlying disease. They will do so by connecting molecular profiles with clinical data to identify molecular surrogates of drivers of important clinical features of disease.

The study will build on previous efforts to assemble and characterise a Danish cohort of individuals affected by AD in adulthood and/or hand dermatitis. The proposed study will add important new dimensions of molecular information that will enable new insights into molecular mechanisms and features of disease. Furthermore, the team sees that an incorporation of molecular measures, namely microbiome and epigenome, may offer insight into environmental correlates or determinants of disease.

Finally, the team foresees that the data and results generated may serve as an important new asset to the AD and dermatology research communities.

“We believe that the data and results generated by our study will enable new research directions and insights into AD and dermatological disease. Furthermore, we believe that such future insights would be enabled by the unique availability of the proposed comprehensive multi-omics data set integrated with comprehensive clinical data and assessment of a large patient cohort,” said Dr. Jeanne Duus Johansen.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2016

Geography: Denmark, USA

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD), such as myocardial infarction and stroke, are leading causes of death globally. Independent of traditional risk factors, however, psoriasis patients run an increased risk of CVD, adding considerably to morbidity and mortality for this large patient group.

“Inflammation has been proposed as a part of the explanation for the association between psoriasis and CVD. However, when we look at the underlying pathophysiology and molecular drivers of this connection, they are unclear. It is also unresolved whether treatment responses for psoriasis alter the course of CVD. To us, this suggests that the connection with inflammation might be more complex than currently appreciated,” said Joel Dudley, Director of Biomedical informatics at Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai in New York.

Together with Peter Riis Hansen, Department of Cardiology, Gentofte Hospital, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Dudley will lead a team focused on developing a much needed understanding between the molecular mechanisms of psoriasis and the increase in CVD comorbidity. Understanding these complex interactions between skin and cardiovascular health will lead to insights for future preventive treatments and improved prognosis.

The team will employ an array of modern high throughput technologies to bring together information about genetics, immunology, local gene expression, microbiomes, and more standard clinical measures to develop an unprecedented map of factors impacting cardiovascular health in psoriatic patients.

“We will apply sophisticated bioinformatics and network biology techniques to integrate the data and develop a disease network model that will enable both discovery and testing of novel hypotheses concerning biomarkers and pathogenic mechanisms. We believe that this disease network model will serve as a powerful and unprecedented resource for the dermatology, cardiology, and immunology research communities,” said Peter Riis Hansen.

More specifically, the model may facilitate the re-interpretation of data from previous studies and clinical trials, be queried by scientific and clinical investigators to evaluate novel clinical and molecular hypotheses, and inform new understanding of fundamental molecular mechanisms underlying the interplay between skin biology, immune function, and the immune-metabolic-cardiovascular axis.

The resulting disease network model may also uncover molecular mechanisms contributing to increased CVD risk in other immune disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis, atopic dermatitis, and inflammatory bowel disease.

“We believe that the data generation activities alone would provide tremendous value to the research community, and that developments in data analysis and bioinformatics has the potential to increase exponentially our understanding of molecular mechanisms underlying CVD risk in inflammatory skin disease,” said Peter Riis Hansen.