Explore our grantees and awardees

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

Staphylococcus aureus is the primary cause of skin infections and is a serious public health threat due to the emergence of antimicrobial-resistant strains as well as the failure of all vaccine clinical trials to date. Thus, there is an unmet need for new therapeutic strategies as alternatives to antibiotics and vaccines. Our proposal aims to solve this problem by interrogating how our immune cells orchestrate protective responses against S. aureus infections. Specifically, we discovered that the amino acid, glutamine, is critical for host defense against S. aureus in the skin. We will use advanced “omics” approaches to understand how glutamine promotes host defense in specific immune cells in the skin using preclinical infection models as well as clinically infected skin. The goal of this study is to identify previously unrecognized immune pathways that can be targeted to augment host immunity against antimicrobial-resistant S. aureus and potentially other skin pathogens.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2025

Geography: Germany

Chronic inflammatory skin diseases affect a quarter of the world’s population, but accurately diagnosing and effectively treating these conditions remains a challenge. This is largely because we do not fully understand how skin cells respond at the protein level to the numerous inflammatory signals. In this project, we will create such a molecular dictionary using “omic technologies”, characterizing how skin cells react to a wide range of inflammatory signals (cytokines). Just as a language dictionary allows us to interpret the meaning of words, our molecular dictionary will enable us to understand the complex language of inflammation in diagnostic biopsies of the skin. In combination with artificial intelligence, we will use this dictionary to select the optimal therapy for the individual patient suffering from an inflammatory skin disease. This has the potential to improve patient outcomes while reducing side-effects and costs of ineffective therapies.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2025

Geography: USA

We seek to understand how CD4+ T cells adapt to and survive in the skin. These cells are crucial for maintaining skin health but also drive diseases like atopic dermatitis and psoriasis. Despite this, we have much still to learn about the biology of CD4+ T cells residing in skin. To fill this gap, our team will use advanced single-cell techniques to study the metabolism of CD4+ T cells in both mouse and human skin. Preliminary data suggest these cells rely on glycolysis, and we aim to explore this further and identify other important metabolic pathways. In the first part of our study, we will use innovative mouse models and CRISPR-Cas9 technology to pinpoint key metabolic needs and regulators. In the second part, we will extend our findings to human skin, examining CD4+ T cells in both healthy and diseased states. Our goal is to uncover how metabolism influences skin immune function, which could lead to new treatments for chronic inflammatory skin diseases.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2025

Geography: Switzerland

Inflammatory skin diseases such as atopic dermatitis and psoriasis are debilitating and chronic conditions characterised by the appearance of rashes and scaly plaques. The symptoms are caused by overactivation of the immune system in which T cells play a key role. Current treatments are known to suppress the entire immune system or target pathways required for appropriate immunity and therefore are associated with significant risks for infections and cancer. Our laboratory has recently defined a pathway that is selectively involved in T cell-mediated inflammatory skin disorders while being dispensable for normal immunity. Within this project we aim to investigate the molecular mechanisms involved, and explore the potential of targeting this pathway as a therapeutic strategy for the suppression of skin inflammation while maintaining overall immunity. The results from this work may allow the delineation of hitherto unexplored and steroid-sparing therapies for inflammatory skin disorders.

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

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. Our 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, we 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: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

The children’s book ’50 NYE vilde videnskabelige forsøg’ (Eng.: 50 NEW Wild Scientific Experiments) is a follow-up to the book ‘Manden der fik skåret sin hjerne i skiver og 49 andre vilde videnskabelige forsøg’. This publication will present exciting scientific discoveries and experiments, aiming to increase curiosity about science among the target group of 9-14-years-olds. The book will be published by Gads Forlag and will be accompanied by a related podcast series featuring some of the stories and content from its pages.

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Grant category: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Danmarks Naturfagslærerforening (Eng.: The Danish Association of Science Teachers) is publishing an anthology on didactic models and methods facilitating an experimental and investigative approach to natural science teaching in Danish schools – with a main focus on motivating students and offering solutions suited for direct implementation in the everyday teaching effort. The book called ‘Naturvidenskabelige undersøgelser – didaktik, elevmotivation og hverdagsrealisme’ (Eng.: Scientific Studies – Didactic, Student Motivation and Everyday Realism) will be distributed by the teachers’ association to its members and will be available for ordering or downloading for others, for free.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Visiting Researchers

Year: 2025

Geography: Spain

Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a naturally abundant molecule in the human body, with approximately half of its total amount found in the skin, where it plays a critical role in maintaining hydration and viscoelasticity. Cutibacterium acnes, a common skin bacterium predominantly found on the upper body, is generally beneficial to the skin. However, certain strains of C. acnes are capable of inducing inflammation and are linked to acne vulgaris. These strains exhibit HA-degrading activity via the enzyme hylA, which leads to the production of proinflammatory HA fragments.

The proposal hypothesizes that reprogramming C. acnes from a HA-degrading bacterium to a HA-synthesizing one could not only reduce its virulence but also enhance its skin-beneficial functions. To test this, the applicant and the collaborators at AU will create a hylA knock-out strain of C. acnes, replacing the hylA gene with a highly active HA synthase, that has been successfully utilized as a recombinant enzyme for HA synthesis in mice.

The repurposed C. acnes strain will be evaluated in vitro for its (anti-)inflammatory effects on skin cells and in vivo on mouse skin for its engraftment potential and its impact on skin barrier function.

The outcomes of this project may form the basis for exploring the potential of engineered probiotic strains with enhanced host-beneficial properties, ultimately contributing to improved health span.

Grant category: Standalone grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Through this grant the LEO Foundation Skin Immunology Research Center is expanding its scientific and technological capabilities by incorporating three new areas of expertise:

• Spatial transcriptomics (in collaboration with the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR))
• Establishment of an animal facility for “wildlings”  – a special type of laboratory mice that contain a – controlled – level of microorganisms which make them more akin to real-world animals and provides a more natural model, in particular for interactions with and responses from the immune system.
• Establishment of advanced 3D skin models for experiments building on genetic manipulation of specific cell types from the skin.

Each area is carefully selected to strengthen the center’s focus on performing frontier research within barrier immunology.

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.