Overview
The Skin Immunology & Immune Tolerance (SKIN) research group is part of the clinical Department of Dermatology at UZ Brussel. The clinical research projects include industry sponsored clinical trials of inflammatory skin diseases, academic studies on HPV-infection, psycho-dermatology, skin cancer imaging technologies, skin ageing & esthetics, wound healing & scar treatment, as well as improvement of our clinical performance, process standardization, PREMs and teledermatology.
The SKIN-lab at the VUB Health campus investigates the underlying immune-mechanisms of inflammatory skin diseases at the cellular level, including atopic dermatitis, rare skin diseases and connective tissue diseases, such as scleroderma or dermatomyositis. Our main interest is the overlap of allergic inflammation to autoimmunity in the context of atopic dermatitis and comorbid diseases (food allergy, asthma and rhinitis). Further, skin cells (primary human epidermal keratinocytes and dermal fibroblasts) are cultivated in our lab and used to establish atopic dermatitis-like human 3D skin models to study the neutralizing effects of novel treatments. Also, we focus on the skin barrier function measurements. In collaboration with the FRIA Research Group (https://fria.research.vub.be), we perform a study on the positive effects of strength training on immunosenescence.