Explore our grantees and awardees

Grant category: Serendipity Grants

Year: 2026

Geography: Sweden

Wounds do not always heal in the same way in everyone. Men and women can differ in how their skin repairs itself, but most research has focused on the effects of sex hormones. Our recent work suggests that the difference may go deeper: some genes that change during wound healing are also expressed differently in male and female skin. This project will explore whether male and female wounds use different molecular programs to repair damaged tissue. We will study human skin wounds using advanced technologies that allow us to analyze thousands of individual cells and see where important genes are active in the tissue. We will also study skin samples from transgender donors receiving hormone treatment, which may help us separate the effects of hormones from more intrinsic biological differences. Finally, we will test selected genes in human skin cell and wound models. This work may reveal new mechanisms of wound healing and support more precise treatments for chronic, non-healing wounds.

Grant category: Serendipity Grants

Year: 2026

Geography: Sweden

Allergic diseases such as atopic dermatitis and asthma often start early in life and can flare repeatedly. They are also linked to health problems outside the skin and lungs, including increased risk of blood clotting and cardiovascular disease, but the reasons are poorly understood. This project asks whether long-lasting “memory” immune cells involved in allergy, called ILC2s, can send signals to the bone marrow and change how blood cells are produced. We will use established mouse models of allergic inflammation together with advanced cell analysis, gene expression studies and functional tests of blood-forming stem cells. We will also compare key findings with human samples. By revealing how allergic inflammation affects the bone marrow, the project may uncover new explanations for allergy-associated comorbidities and identify future strategies to prevent long-term complications of allergic disease.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2026

Geography: Sweden

Vitiligo is a condition where the immune system mistakenly attacks pigment-producing skin cells, causing white patches. While powerful new drugs called biologics can stop this, taking them via whole-body injections causes severe side effects. Since vitiligo is localized to the skin, treating the whole body is risky. However, these fragile drugs cannot easily cross the skin’s tough barrier on their own.

We are solving this by developing a painless “”smart patch”” covered in dissolving microneedles. To protect the delicate biologic drugs, we first pack them into tiny nanocarriers made from a natural mineral. These protected drugs are then embedded into the microneedles. When applied to the affected skin, the needles painlessly penetrate and dissolve, releasing the medicine exactly where the immune cells are misbehaving.

This project aims to provide a safe, highly effective way to halt vitiligo locally, without shutting down the patient’s entire immune system.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Sweden

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common skin condition, characterized by itchy, inflamed skin. Identifying the allergens that trigger AD can be challenging, suggesting that allergen independent immune mechanisms are at play in AD. One key player in non-specific immune responses is a type of lymphocyte called ILC2. Itziar Martinez Gonzalez discovered that ILC2s in human skin can remember previous activations and induce a more severe inflammation upon subsequent triggers. Memory ILC2s could be important in triggering the recurrent flare-ups seen in AD. Now, Itziar Martinez Gonzalez aims to understand how memory ILC2s contribute to AD by studying how they are regulated at the cellular level and how they interact with their environment in the skin. Itziar and her team will also investigate if memory ILC2s play a role in the development of other allergic diseases associated with AD, like asthma. By studying how memory ILC2s function in AD, Itziar and the team hope to identify new ways to treat this chronic and often debilitating condition.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Sweden

The versatile and complex functions of skin depend on its intricate structure, which comes from different cell origins during embryonic development. Despite its importance, we know little about how these origins shape skin health and disease across the body, partly because existing tools for studying skin are slow, expensive, and use many animals. Emma Andersson’s project aims to solve this by developing a fast and efficient way to study skin in different parts of the body, using a technique called in utero nano-injection, in mice. This method lets us precisely target and modify skin cells in developing mouse embryos, focusing on key regions like facial skin and body dermis. By creating new tools to study deeper cell layers in detail, Emma Andersson and her team can uncover how they work in normal conditions and diseases. This breakthrough would save time, reduce animal use, and open new doors for understanding and treating skin disorders.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: Sweden

Niclas Roxhed’s technology-focused project aims to investigate the potential of spiked microspheres as vehicles for large-molecular drug delivery into skin to treat diseases.

Modern biologic drugs have transformed the way we treat many diseases. However, these drug molecules are too large to pass biologic barriers and therefore need to be injected. For skin diseases, the outermost skin layer effectively prevents larger molecules from entering the skin.

To address this problem, Niclas Roxhed and his team have tailor-made ultra-sharp spiked microspheres that painlessly penetrate only the outermost skin layer and allow delivery of large molecules into skin. In this project, they will use these spiked microspheres in an atopic dermatitis model to topically deliver large-molecular nucleic acids and nanocarriers to inhibit inflammatory reactions. To verify effective delivery, Niclas Roxhed and his team will quantify inflammatory markers in skin using micro-sampling and proteomics profiling.

The results could form the basis for highly effective delivery of biopharmaceuticals as topical creams and potentially revolutionize treatment strategies in skin disease.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: Sweden

Jakob Wikstrom’s project aims to improve the understanding of mitophagy, a process where damaged and aged mitochondria are removed and recycled intracellularly, in relation to wound healing.

In the event of abnormal wound healing, chronic wounds may form and thereby place a large burden on healthcare systems. Importantly, treatment options remain limited owing to the complex nature of chronic wound pathogenesis, meaning alternative avenues need to be explored in the quest to develop novel therapies.

One avenue that Jakob Wikstrom and his team aim to pursue is that of targeting mitochondria and in particular, the quality-control process of mitophagy. Mitochondria play vital roles required for efficient wound healing, most notably in regulating metabolism. However, the role of mitophagy in wound healing is poorly understood, and only a few studies have studied it in human tissue.

Interestingly, preliminary data from human tissue and primary human cell culture for this project shows that mitophagy plays an important role in the early- and mid-wound healing stages, and that mitophagy induction aids in fibroblast and keratinocyte migration. However, the precise mechanisms of how mitophagy is required in these cell types during wound healing is yet to be elucidated.

Jakob Wikstrom and his team aim to evaluate the mechanistic role of mitophagy in wound healing through a variety of experiments on relevant human cell types, investigating metabolism, chronic inflammation, and gene expression, as well as comprehensively disseminating the impact of mitophagy on wound healing in mouse models.

Successful implementation of this project could provide novel ideas for and facilitate the development of future mitochondria-targeted wound treatments.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2023

Geography: Sweden

Maria Genander’s project aims to understand the physiological role of the enzymes PADI3 and PADI4, which convert the amino acid arginine to citrulline, in normal hair growth – to ultimately better understand the changes that happen during unwanted hair loss, alopecia.

Hair follicle (HF) growth, leading to the generation of the hair shaft, requires coordinated development of the cells that make up hair. Protein modifications act to fine-tune the action of the signaling that leads to cellular maturation and differentiation and impacts directly on the properties of structural proteins required for hair formation. In this project, Maria Genander and her team investigate the expression of the protein-modifying enzymes PADI3 and PADI4 in the HF to understand the functional impact of PADI-mediated citrullination on cell differentiation and hair growth. Preliminary data indicate that PADI4 restricts proliferation of HF progenitor cells committed to the hair shaft lineage. Using sophisticated methodology, they aim to decipher mechanistically how PADI4 influences HF lineage progression. In addition, they will use in-utero lentiviral injections in mice to probe the function of PADI3a and PADI3b to understand how distinct PADI3 isoforms impacts hair formation and the development of alopecia.

Collectively, Maria Genander’s work will focus on addressing citrullination in hair follicle growth and hair formation. Understanding normal hair follicle development is a prerequisite for development of therapeutic strategies targeting alopecia.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2023

Geography: Sweden

Kilian Eyerich’s project aims to investigate the role of the transcription factor FOXO4 in the development of a specific type of T cells – the Th22 cells.

Th22 cells are a distinct subset of CD4+ T helper cells, and their effector cytokine IL-22 plays a protective role in barrier homeostasis by regulating innate immune responses, antimicrobial defense mechanisms, and wound healing. The natural differentiation of naive CD4+ T cells into the Th22 lineage and production of IL-22 by these cells is a multifactorial process that is not yet fully understood. In this project, Kilian Eyerich, along with colleague Kunal Das Mahapatra and team, will investigate the hypothesis that the transcription factor FOXO4 is a novel regulator of IL-22 production in Th22 cells. Pilot data show that FOXO4 is upregulated in human skin derived Th22 clones. It has a pattern of early induction and steady increment during Th22 differentiation, which is governed by the cytokines IL-6 and TNF-a. Moreover, the team has shown that silencing FOXO4 in naive T cells in a

Th22-inducing condition leads to reduced IL-22 secretion and that there is a protective effect of this regulation on epithelial cells, as observed in a scratch assay where keratinocytes, cultured in the supernatant from FOXO4-depleted T cells, migrated less efficiently.

The proposed project therefore aims to perform a deeper characterization of FOXO4 in Th22 cells by systematically identifying FOXO4-regulated genes, downstream pathways, and potential co-factors. In addition, the extrinsic role of FOXO4 on keratinocytes and skin wound healing will be assessed by ex vivo assays and analysis of multi-omics data from human patients.

Taken together, this project may offer novel insights into the regulatory processes in development and function of Th22 T cells.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2022

Geography: Sweden

Ning Xu Landén’s project seeks to improve wound healing by identifying key regulators of cellular transition from inflammation to proliferation, a cardinal event during normal skin wound healing which is lacking in chronic wounds.

Ning and her team will approach this by mapping the spatiotemporal changes, both genetic, molecular and cellular, happening during the healing of acute wounds. Using this mapping, she and her team will then aim to identify the core genetic changes and intercellular crosstalk which regulates the inflammation to proliferation transition. Once identified, these changes and intercellular crosstalk will be characterized in more detail.

The ultimate goal is to identify the “master” regulators of inflammation-to-proliferation transition in order to improve and accelerate wound healing and thus minimize the risk of development of chronic wounds.

If successful, this project could pave the way for a novel approach to wound healing which may also eventually reduce subsequent scarring.