Explore our grantees and awardees

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: Netherlands

Mycetoma is one of the world’s most neglected diseases – a slow growing skin infection that causes severe pain and deformities. It affects people in poor, rural areas across more than 20 countries, spanning five continents. The fungal form, eumycetoma, can lead to lifelong disability, and, in many cases, amputation. It is often accompanied by social stigma and mental health challenges, further isolating patients. Current treatments are toxic, unaffordable, and must be taken for up to a year – often with poor results. One major reason better treatments haven’t been developed is that there is no reliable way to test new drugs before trying them on humans. Wendy Laureijssen-van de Sande’s project will develop the first mouse model that closely mimics the human form of the disease. This will enable researchers to test new antifungal compounds more safely and effectively, laying the path for better, faster and more affordable treatments for patients who urgently need them.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2025

Geography: Australia

Autoimmune bullous disease is a condition where the patient’s immune system attacks their skin, causing painful blistering. Some patients develop blisters in the mouth, leading to difficulty eating and malnutrition or inflammation in the eye, which can cause blindness. There is no cure. Treatment involves suppressing the immune system but can lead to side effects and increased infections. Joanne Reed’s research will use new technology to investigate patient blood and skin samples left over from biopsies performed for diagnosis. The technology enables patient samples to be evaluated at an unprecedented level of detail to identify and study the immune cells and genes responsible for disease. This information will be used to develop a test that can predict patients at risk of severe symptoms to enable early intervention before permanent organ damage occurs. The detailed analysis of the disease-causing cells will also inform the development of new drugs that can specifically target these cells.

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: 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 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: France

The skin is the body’s primary barrier against physical insults and microbial pathogens. It also functions as an active immune organ, both in its homeostatic state and during inflammation. Understanding of mechanisms underlying cutaneous immunity and how they contribute to tolerogenic or immunogenic signaling pathways, is crucial to develop therapeutic strategies for different skin diseases. For example, efforts have been made to develop immunotherapy to induce immune tolerance in allergies and autoimmune disorders. Mei Li’s study is based on recent identification of a key regulatory pathway in promoting skin immune tolerance. Mei Li and her team’s objective is to delineate the nature and function of this new regulatory pathway across AD, allergies and vitiligo to develop proof-of-concepts to raise new immunotherapy strategies. The mechanisms and targets discovered in this study may also be applicable to other inflammatory skin diseases.

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: United Kingdom

Medicated creams and ointments are used to treat millions of people every day. Despite this, inconsistent drug delivery remains a long-standing issue. While Finlay’s Fingertip Unit was introduced in 1973 to address this gap, there is still a challenge in delivering consistent doses of topical medicines for small lesions, such as those seen in . This issue is particularly relevant today with the introduction of incredibly potent topical medicines. Oisín Kavanagh’s project aims to design an adjustable adapter that enables patients to accurately control the amount of medication they apply to their skin. During the design process, Oisín Kavanagh and his team will collaborate with patients and their carers to ensure that this product meets their needs.