Explore our grantees and awardees

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Patients with atopic dermatitis (AD) are much more likely to develop other environmental (pollen, dust mites) or food allergies, but we do not understand why. Our immune system usually ignores most proteins in contact with the skin, yet some people, have a strong reaction. With this project we aim to determine whether human and microbe enzymes on AD-affected skin can turn harmless proteins into allergens by cutting them or chemically modifying them. We will use lab-grown human skin models and cutting-edge tools to see how bacteria and damaged skin cells alter proteins like those from pollen, dust mites, of peanut and whether these changes make them more likely to trigger allergic reactions. We will also study how these modified proteins are recognised by the immune system. The results could lead to better ways to prevent allergies in people with AD, such as treatments that block harmful enzymes, protect the skin barrier, or train the immune system to tolerate allergens.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Chronic urticaria, also known as chronic hives, is a common skin condition causing itchy rashes and swelling, considerably impacting the quality of life. Although common, the exact cause remains unknown. We will study the proteins involved in chronic urticaria to better understand the underlying disease mechanisms and hopefully find new treatment options. We will use a specialized technique called mass spectrometry to measure the proteins in skin samples from patients with hives and healthy controls. With this approach we can determine which proteins are altered in affected skin, offering new insights into the underlying causes of the condition. Additionally, we will study how immune cells and nerve signals affect the disease by conducting laboratory experiments. By understanding the biology of chronic urticaria better, we hope to contribute to the development of more effective and targeted treatments that could help people suffering from this challenging condition.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa are commonly associated with non-healing and aggravated wounds, since they can colonize and invade host tissues, and many times cause life threatening conditions such as sepsis. Resistance to the available antibiotic therapies has been reported for both bacteria, and serious S. aureus skin infections are noted in both humans and animals. This project will investigate the ability of proteasome-derived defence peptides (PDDPs) – which can be naturally produced by our body – to protect against infection whilst promoting wound healing. It will also analyse the mechanisms by which PDDPs exert their effects. For this, different techniques (in vitro, ex vivo and molecular biology) will be used. For the ex vivo experiments, a wound dressing containing PDDPs will be developed with specific characteristics to allow PDDPs to target the pathogens whilst promoting wound healing.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Chronic skin wounds and burns are major healthcare challenges, often healing slowly and leading to infections, pain, and high medical costs. Sine Hadrup’s project focuses on an enzyme that may worsen inflammation and delay healing of the injured skin. Sine Hardrup and her team will use artificial intelligence-driven protein design to create a small protein inhibitor (miBd) that blocks the enzyme, preventing its harmful effects. First, they will test whether miBds can bind and stop enzyme activity. Then, they will evaluate their impact on wound healing using human cell culture. Finally, they will test them in a pig skin model, as pig skin closely resembles human skin. Burns are introduced on the pig skin and treated topically with or without the miBds. If successful, this research could lead to new treatment options for wound healing and inflammatory skin diseases like psoriasis, offering better patient outcomes and faster recovery times.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Multiple common skin diseases, like psoriasis, are characterized by excessive inflammation of the affected skin. This causes itching and pain and makes wound healing difficult. Thus, skin inflammation is of general discomfort for the affected patients. Anti-inflammatory drugs, for example inhibitors of the TNF signaling pathway, are highly successful in the clinic for some but not all types of skin inflammation. Rune Hartmann’s project aims at a better understanding of the underlying causes of skin inflammation and how to develop better drugs in the future. Furthermore, Rune Hartmann and his team are investigating how the same signaling pathway can drive skin inflammation and thus cause pathology, while being a critical part of healthy skin development. This is critical to understand how to target future drugs specifically towards the pathological inflammation and avoid unwanted side effects.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Elastin is a structural protein essential for human life. It provides the elasticity needed for organs like skin, lungs, and blood vessels, allowing your skin to stretch, your lungs to expand for breathing and your blood to flow smoothly. As we age, factors like oxidative stress can make elastin stiffer, reducing the skin’s elasticity and accelerating the aging process. This can lead to skin conditions, such as thickening and furrowing or increased fragility. Andrea Heinz’ project uses advanced analytical techniques to investigate how oxidative damage affect elastin’s structure and stability, starting with its building block, tropoelastin, and extending to skin elastin. The goal is to understand how these alterations contribute to elastic fiber breakdown and tissue dysfunction. Ultimately, this knowledge will help them understand how elastin damage drives disease and tissue degeneration, which could lead to better treatments that protect tissue elasticity and improve overall health.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Millions of people suffer from infected wounds each year, which can lead to serious complications or even death if untreated. Current methods for diagnosing wound infections are slow and require specialized laboratories. Gohar Soufi’s project aims to create a simple, portable device that uses advanced materials to detect infections quickly and accurately right at the patient’s bedside. This technology could revolutionize how infections are diagnosed, helping doctors start treatments sooner and improving patient outcomes.

Grant category: Research Grants

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

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.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: Denmark

Julián Valero’s project explores an innovative approach for targeted drug delivery into the skin through the utilization of RNA aptamers (RNA snippets that are capable of binding to specific targets with high affinity and specificity). In collaboration with Patrizia Stoitzner and Helen Strandt (Medical University Innsbruck), Steffen Thiel (Aarhus University), Claus Johansen (Aarhus University Hospital) and Niels Schaft (University Hospital Erlangen), Julián Valero and his team will develop chemically modified RNA aptamers to target Langerhans cells (LC) or to block immune responses, aiming to develop treatment options for the autoimmune disease vitiligo. This disease is characterized by the infiltration of autoreactive cytotoxic T cells into the skin causing destruction of melanocytes important for producing skin pigments as UV-protection shield. The project will explore different approaches to dampen the autoimmune process during vitiligo, including the potential of local delivery of (i) anti-inflammatory molecules, (ii) antigenic peptides to reprogram CD4+T cells to regulatory T cells and (iii) immuno-blocking aptamers.

This project may enable development of innovative skin vaccination strategies and local anti-inflammatory treatment. Ultimately, this research holds the potential to alter skin-targeted therapies, enhance immune responses, and mitigate off-target effects by cell-specific delivery of novel vaccines.