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SKINDEV will last for 4 years and has received 3 million euros in funding. The group from Ellen van den Bogaard is one of five research groups from different European and United Kingdom institutions that are joined together in this interdisciplinary consortium.
With the kick-off meeting, held in Barcelona from 12-13 March, the project begins. The project aims to design treatments based on microbiomes with a synthetic biological component to detect and treat atopic dermatitis. Atopic dermatitis is a highly debilitating common chronic inflammatory skin disease. It is a multifaceted illness in which various factors interact, such as the immune system, the cutaneous microbiome and genetic and environmental factors. While it can affect people of any age, it is especially common among young children and is the main cause of skin illness.
With SKINDEV the team aims to turn the skin microbiome into an engineerable platform for generating biosensors which allow atopic dermatitis-related inflammation to be detected, as well as for making bacterial actuators which will allow the immune response to be modulated. Instead of a simple probiotic, the smart skin microbial devices allow us to detect and activate treatment where and when needed.
The project will last for 4 years and has been awarded 3 million euros of funding from the European Innovation Council, in the PATHFINDER OPEN call which seeks to identify, develop and scale up breakthrough technologies and game-changing innovations. The Laboratory for Experimental Dermatology of the Radboudumc will receive 910.000 euros in order to apply skin tissue engineering techniques to develop novel skin-host-microbe models and apply biosensor machinery and specific actuators for treating atopic dermatitis.
The consortium members at the kick-off meeting (fltr): Cristina Zalado Manzano (project manager) Prof. dr. Bernhard Homey, Prof. dr. Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, Dr. Jos Smits, Dr. Reiko Tanaka, Javier Santos Moreno, Dr. Patrick Jansen, Prof. Marc Güell, Guillermo Nevot Sanchez, Prof. Ellen van den Bogaard, dr. Ammat Annan.
