Explore our grantees and awardees

Grant category: Research Grants in open competition

Year: 2024

Geography: United Kingdom

This project concerns establishing a consortium for research in the genetics of skin diseases, which are the 4th leading cause of disability globally. Lavinia Paternoster and the group behind the Skin Genetic Consortium (SGC) will use population-scale genomic datasets from across the globe to conduct well-powered human genetic studies to discover disease mechanisms, identify and prioritize drug targets, and improve the accuracy and utility of skin disease diagnoses for epidemiological research. Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the number and diversity of population biobanks across the globe. The SGC will leverage these resources to undertake genome-wide association studies for an extensive set of skin conditions. Sample sizes in excess of 4 million will increase power for gene discovery in many previously understudied skin conditions. Furthermore, cross-disease analyses will be performed to identify shared disease mechanisms, potentially revealing drug re-purposing opportunities. The SGC brings together experts in genetic epidemiology, clinical dermatology and cohort custodians. This first phase of the SGC will uncover key biological insights and drug target evidence for an initial set of common skin conditions.

The project aims to generate a platform for uploading and harmonizing data, performing streamlined genetic analysis and open distribution of results. With further funding the SGC will expand to increase participant diversity, extend analyses to rare variants and generate additional molecular functional genomics data for experimental validation and clinical translation of results.

Grant category: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: Denmark

Videnskab.dk will further develop the existing initiative Forskerne Formidler (Eng. Researchers Communicate), now with an expanded international focus. The overall purpose of Forskerne Formidler is to provide easy access for the public to the science that shapes the world, directly from the scientists themselves. With a continuation of the program and platform it will focus on the development of three different areas: new genres and improvement of quality for existing, courses and training in dissemination for scientists, and international distribution, collaboration and network within academic journalism.

Videnskab.dk is Denmark’s leading popular science media with around 1 million monthly users. The media is an independent source of daily science news, features and other quality content in many different formats.

Forskerne Formidler is supported by the LEO Foundation alongside the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Lundbeck Foundation, and the Augustinus Foundation.

Read more about Forskerne Formidler

Grant category: LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships

Year: 2024

Geography: Denmark

Project title: Checkpoint receptor pathways as new targets for the treatment of skin fibrosis

Fellowship theme: Advanced Therapeutics Research in Skin Diseases

Skin fibrosis results in thick and stiff skin with a limited barrier function. This causes an increased risk of infections, pain and reduced function. No cure is available, and treatment options are limited. Stinne Ravn Greisen’s vision is to improve the treatment of skin fibrosis. To do this, she will advance our understanding of how the immune system and its regulatory pathways contribute to the development of skin fibrosis.

Skin fibrosis is a result of a complex interplay between an overactive immune system and excessive production of proteins supporting the connective tissue. This is exemplified in the systemic autoimmune disease scleroderma, and in localized keloid scarring. She hypothesize that immune regulatory pathways play a central role in the development of skin fibrosis, and in this project, she will: 1. Investigate fibrosis in skin samples from scleroderma skin, keloid scars and healthy volunteers, where she will focus on how immune regulatory pathways affect the interaction between immune cells and production of connective tissue material. 2. Establish a skin model to test potential new treatment options, and to understand how the immune cells work in a complex environment. 3. Use a mouse model to better understand the development of skin fibrosis and to test potential new treatment options.

The complex interaction between the immune system and fibrosis development is still poorly understood, which explains the limited treatment options for skin fibrosis. Stinne Ravn Greisen’s project will contribute to a detailed understanding of the immune mechanisms contributing to skin fibrosis. This knowledge is essential to develop new and better treatments. The outcome of her project will benefit patients with skin fibrosis as a result of scleroderma or keloid scarring but will also increase our fundamental understanding of the fibrotic process which is involved in multiple conditions including systemic inflammatory diseases, cancers, and cardiovascular diseases.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships

Year: 2024

Geography: Denmark

Project title: Personalized medicine in dermatology: Algorithm assisted early identification of high-risk patients with hidradenitis suppurativa – initiation of prompt treatment in order to avoid disease progression

Fellowship theme: Systems Medicine in Dermatology

Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that causes the formation of painful, impairing and suppurating boils. It plagues 1% of the global population at great cost to both the individual and society. While effective treatments exist, the most effective forms are expensive, and their use is restricted to patients with severe disease. Building on his expertise within clinical research, complex data analysis of genetic and environmental risk factors and construction of temporal disease trajectories, Rune Andersen’s research initiative aims at providing HS patients with individual risk assessment of disease progression and development of severe comorbidities.

Rune Andersen’s vision is to initiate personalized medicine within dermatology by creating a tool that can identify HS patients with a high risk of disease progression so that prompt preventive treatment at an early stage can be initiated.

To do so Rune Andersen and his group will take advantage of large established clinical cohorts, and through state-of-the-art techniques within datamining, clinical epidemiology, population genetics, and molecular biomedicine, he will uncover risk factors of individual disease progression and the development of severe comorbidities. This information is to be used to develop and validate predictive algorithms that can help in the transition from treatment to prevention.

Completion of this project will allow Rune Andersen to transition from standard of care to personalized medicine within HS by focusing on prevention of disease progression and comorbidity development rather than treatment. This will improve both patient welfare, and public resource-management and expenditures.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships

Year: 2024

Geography: Denmark

Project title: Optimizing treatment of psoriasis

Fellowship theme: Systems Medicine in Dermatology

Nikolai Loft’s project is dedicated to revolutionizing the treatment of psoriasis by personalizing approaches based on individual patient characteristics and needs. The focus is on determining the underlying reasons why some patients experience a loss in the effectiveness of their treatment and whether treatment of psoriasis can prevent the onset of psoriatic arthritis (PsA). By identifying predictive markers for these conditions, Nikolai Loft’s project aims to tailor treatment plans that maintain effectiveness over time and mitigate the risk of PsA and thereby improve patient outcomes substantially.

Nikolai Loft plans to identify markers that can predict loss of treatment response in patients with psoriasis and markers that can predict development of PsA. The project will capitalize on Denmark’s unique data infrastructure integrating national registries with bioresources. This will involve thorough characterization using existing registry data and additional in-depth immunological and genetic profiling using new biological samples from more than 1000 patients with psoriasis. Additionally, Nikolai Loft and his research group will, based on these findings, assess the PsA protective properties of treatments of psoriasis. The end goal is to develop models that can identify patients at risk of treatment failure or developing PsA enabling adjustments of treatment strategies to mitigate these risks.

Nikolai Loft hopes to be able to reduce the incidence of treatment failure and enhance the quality of life for individuals with psoriasis by enabling more stable and effective treatment regimens. By doing so, he hopes to decrease healthcare costs associated with switching therapies. In the long term, by preventing PsA, this research project seeks to reduce the overall burden of psoriasis and its complications. Ultimately, tailoring treatment to the individual patient’s needs.

Grant category: LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships

Year: 2024

Geography: Denmark

Project title: Uncoupling the contribution of systemic and site-specific immunity in inflammatory skin disorders

Fellowship theme: Advanced Therapeutics Research in Skin Diseases

Patients with skin diseases can often suffer from other conditions like asthma, arthritis and inflammatory diseases of the intestines, suggesting that these diseases may be linked by a common cause. Importantly, there is currently no tool that can be used in the clinic to measure skin disease activity regularly. In the skin, resident memory T cells (TRM) can reside for years, providing protection to old and new infections, but at times, causing inflammatory skin diseases. A portion of these cells are thought to migrate through our bodies via the blood and there is the possibility that these inflammatory T cells can land in other organs and cause disease. Finding these rather rare inflammatory T cells has been difficult.

Wenning Zheng’s research project will focus on using the blood of healthy people and patients with eczema, psoriasis, and psoriatic arthritis (PsA) to find these rare aggressive T cells. Using sensitive new assays and building on her expertise as a computational immunologist, her group at LEO Foundation Skin Immunology Research Center will employ high resolution single cell T cell clones sequencing on donor-matched blood and tissues to understand the propensity for T cells to circulate from the skin, through the blood and into other organs. Since T cells quite specifically recognize antigens through a highly-diverse receptor on their cell surface, Wenning will characterize the diversity of these receptors and combine machine learning and wet-lab methods to identify the nature of antigens that are detected by T cells. It is hoped that by understanding the precise antigens that T cells see, we can develop tools to diagnose and treat skin diseases with greater precision.

Grant category: Standalone grants

Year: 2024

Geography: Denmark

The science center Experimentarium in Copenhagen will open a major exhibition about the human body in 2026. The exhibition is called Super-krop!, which means Super body, and aims to illustrate the interaction between the body and behavior, targeting a younger audience.

Super-krop! is supported by the LEO Foundation alongside the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Lundbeck Foundation, and Ole Kirk’s Foundation with a total of DKK 30 million.

Grant category: Serendipity Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: USA

Ya-Chieh Hsu’s project investigates the mechanisms behind the unexpected observation that wound healing slows upon increased innervation of the surrounding tissue.

During testing of a virus-based tool designed to genetically manipulate skin cells Ya-Chieh Hsu and her team serendipitously discovered that increased innervation at a wound site slows healing and leads to increased scarring. This discovery suggests that wound-induced hyper-innervation may be important in driving scarring and fibrosis.

Grant category: Serendipity Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: United Kingdom

Shoba Amarnath’s project will investigate an unexpected link between regulatory T cells and the development of psoriatic arthritis (PsA).

In Shoba Amarnath’s original studies, based on her LEO Foundation Award in 2019, she sought to understand the role of immune cells in melanoma. As part of these investigations and to compare immune responses between cancer and autoimmunity, Shoba serendipitously found, through single-cell RNA and protein level analysis, that regulatory T cell (Treg) communication pathways with unconventional immune cells were significantly disrupted in psoriatic arthritis (PsA). This unbiased deep phenotyping specifically revealed a novel Treg specific regulatory mechanism in autoimmunity, especially crosstalk with osteoclast precursors (OCPs). It also has identified new targetable proteins in diseases where there is significant bone loss.

Grant category: Serendipity Grants

Year: 2024

Geography: USA

Philip Scumpia’s project will investigate a surprising discovery that links gender to differences in immune responses.

Philip Scumpia and his team created new formulations of biomaterials intended to improve cutaneous wound healing and decrease size of scars in his current LEO Foundation-funded project. While evaluating the immunological mechanisms, Philip and his team observed considerable variability in immune cell recruitment to the different hydrogels. After careful scrutiny they realized this variability was entirely due to the fact that female mice developed stronger immune responses to the hydrogel than male mice. Strikingly, female mice displayed a much earlier and more severe skin inflammation in other mouse models studied in the laboratory includingeczema, psoriasis, and sunburn.