Explore our grantees and awardees

Grant category: Research Networking

Year: 2024

Geography: USA

The skin barrier is the first defense against the external environment, and barrier disruption plays a key role in skin and systemic diseases that impact millions of people. The main purpose of the GRC Barrier Function of Mammalian Skin conference is to bring together young investigators and prominent leaders to present the latest developments in skin barrier research.

The 2025 conference, Technologies and platforms for understanding, modelling and intervening in skin barrier function and disorders, will bring together researchers, scientists, engineers, and clinicians involved in research related to skin health and disease. Diverse areas of science will be covered, including cell biology and pathology, microbiology, environmental sciences, bioengineering, biophysics, physical chemistry, and drug delivery.

The meeting will be held August 10-15, 2025.

The LEO Foundation has provided support for the previous Gordon Research Conferences.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Awards

Year: 2024

Geography: Japan

Satoru Yonekora is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Dermatology at Kyoto University in Japan

He was awarded the prestigious LEO Foundation Award 2024 in Region Asia-Pacific during the 49th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Investigative Dermatology. Satoru Yonekura’s research has contributed to new insights into how gut health influences melanoma and inflammatory skin diseases.

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Grant category: Research Networking

Year: 2024

Geography: USA

The Gordon Research Conference on Epithelial Differentiation and Keratinization (GRC-EDK) has been the premier international meeting in skin biology since 1979. The 2025 GRC-EDK meeting is called Epithelial Development, Aging, Disease and Regeneration Across Cells and System and brings together speakers at the forefront of areas including skin immunity, tissue sensing and crosstalk, genomics and epigenomics, aging, regeneration, and novel technologies to drive therapy. The meeting will foster intense interactions at the interphase of these different disciplines and promote discussion to discover synergies and novel therapeutic prospects to advance the field as a whole.

The event will take place May 31-June 1, 2025.

The LEO Foundation has provided support for the three previous Gordon Research Conferences.

Grant category: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: Denmark

Science City Lyngby will produce 18 videos of female STEM role models to create awareness and interest among girls in STEM activities and education. The videos consist of three series, one focusing on personal stories of women working in STEM jobs, and another on interviews with well-known female science profiles of influence. The final series features girls attending Science Club, an after-school program offered by Science City Lyngby. The Science Club girls will also be actively involved together with a professional journalist in the planning and execution of the video series, creating identification and ensuring relevance for the main target group. The videos will be disseminated through 10 roadshows in other Danish municipalities, presentations at lower secondary schools, and a social media campaign also targeting parents and teachers.

Read more about Science Girls

Grant category: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: Denmark

Folkeuniversitetet in Aarhus will establish a free annual science festival, PARK, for the public to take place at Aarhus University Park. Leading scientists will give talks about the latest research results, with the aim of promoting curiosity and contributing actively to democracy. The program will also feature events within music, literature, and art.

Grant category: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: Denmark

The project Through the researchers’ eyes aims to improve natural science education in the lower secondary school by applying a teaching method known from the arts, Visual Thinking Strategies, which focuses on strengthening students’ skills within observation, description, and discussion – key elements also of the natural science disciplines – to stimulate students’ curiosity and active participation. The project is a collaboration between both education experts and university researchers from Copenhagen University, experts from VTSdanmark and chosen teachers.

Read more about the team

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2024

Geography: Denmark

Jonathan Brewer’s project, conducted in collaboration with Dr. Mike Barnkob, aims to advance skin biology by developing a much-needed human skin model with immune components, enabling detailed study of skin responses to stress and disease. By creating both normal and diseased skin models, with a focus on Cutaneous Lupus Erythematosus (CLE), Jonathan Brewer and his team will investigate the immune processes underlying CLE skin manifestations and provide a platform for developing targeted treatments. These models will also allow Jonathan and the team to study how skin and immune cells respond to UV radiation and mechanical forces, both of which play a significant role in CLE, where such stimuli can exacerbate skin lesions. A key innovation is the use of MERFISH technology, which maps gene activity within individual cells. This will reveal how specific genes are activated or suppressed in response to stimuli, providing insights into how skin adapts over time at the single-cell level. By comparing normal and CLE skin models, they will identify unique pathways involved in disease progression in CLE, offering potential targets for new therapeutic strategies.

The results of the project will be 3D skin models that mimic the structure and environment of human skin, enabling a wide range of experimental applications, including more rapid and ethical drug discovery. The project will also deliver the identification of pathways and molecular regulators involved in CLE and skin responses to UV and mechanical stimuli, supporting targeted treatment development and improved patient outcomes.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2024

Geography: USA

Aydogan Ozcan’s project explores a potential alternative to the current diagnostic standard in allergic contact dermatitis (ACD) —patch testing —which has remained largely unchanged since its development over a century ago. It seeks to transform the diagnosis of ACD by developing a novel wearable sensor capable of remote monitoring and early detection. The sensor will be designed to measure changes in the skin’s optical properties, offering a more efficient, convenient, and comfortable alternative to the traditional method of patch testing. Aydogan Ozcan’s project includes the creation of skin phantom models’ representative of diverse skin tones to rigorously test the wearable sensor, followed by a phased human study.

The results of the project could enable more convenient, equitable, and cost-effective diagnosis in ACD, thereby improving patient outcomes. Additionally, this technology holds the potential to be adapted for the monitoring of other skin conditions, representing a significant advancement in the field of dermatology.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2024

Geography: Norway

Rasmus Iversen’s project explores the hypothesis that complex formation between self- and non-self-antigen can drive pathogenic T cell-B cell interactions and autoantibody formation in autoimmune diseases like Systemic Sclerosis (SSc). Inspired by previous work on celiac disease, Rasmus Iversen and his team will use the function of the B-cell antigen as a starting point to decipher disease mechanisms. In SSc, the T-cell antigen(s) are unknown, but there is disease-specific production of autoantibodies to centromere proteins (CENPs) with CENP-B being a major B-cell antigen. To investigate autoantibody formation, Rasmus Iversen and the team will isolate CENP-B-specific B cells from blood of SSc patients. In the first step (WP1), they will characterize the cells’ phenotypes in detail. The cells will then be used for generation of recombinant CENP-B-specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) in WP2. These mAbs will be used for studying interactions between the immune system, CENP-B and target DNA. In WP3, they aim to identify DNA fragments of commensal bacteria that can form complexes with CENP-B and potentially drive T cell-B cell interactions.

The results of Rasmus Iversen’s project may provide Insight into disease mechanisms and can potentially lead to discovery of new therapeutic targets in e.g. systemic sclerosis (SSc), which is a serious autoimmune disease that affects the skin and internal organs.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2024

Geography: Denmark

The ATHENA project will explore the untapped potential of stratum corneum nanotexture (SCN, the nanoscale morphology of the outermost skin layer) to advance research and clinical evaluations of challenging-to-diagnose conditions: psoriasis, hand eczema (HE), and actinic keratosis (AK). Edwin En-Te Hwu’s MIDAS group has previously demonstrated that deep learning models could classify atopic dermatitis severity through SCN with high accuracy. Building on these findings, ATHENA aims to identify disease phenotypes across ethnicities and skin phototypes to optimize treatment strategies. ATHENA will: a) collect 1,050 stratum corneum tape strip samples from five countries across four continents, b) build a large dataset of 13,500 SCN images, c) develop self-supervised deep learning models to correlate SCN with skin conditions, and d) explore and identify robust SCN biomarkers for skin diseases. The non-invasive stratum corneum tape strip sampling method is painless and repeatable, causing no tissue damage and allowing frequent monitoring of therapy and disease progression. This method enables patients to collect samples at home for remote analysis, facilitating early detection and intervention to reduce social and economic burden.