Ellen van den Bogaard appointed professor of Innovative Experimental and Translational Dermatology

1 March 2021

Effective March 1, 2021, Ellen van den Bogaard has been appointed professor of Innovative Experimental and Translational Dermatology at Radboud university medical center/Radboud University. She will focus on the development of scientific skin models to elucidate mechanisms behind chronic skin diseases such as psoriasis and eczema.

Van den Bogaard's research focuses on the development of natural tissue culture models (organoids, mini-organs) of human body cells, which mimic the construction and function of the skin. Van den Bogaard will specifically focus on refining and implementing these skin models with new research techniques, so that they become valuable for the individual patient with a chronic inflammatory skin disease, like psoriasis or atopic eczema.

Three-dimensional models of the skin

Ellen H.J. van den Bogaard (1984, Wijchen) studied Biomedical Sciences at Radboud University in Nijmegen. She obtained her PhD cum laude in 2014 on her thesis ‘From skin development to disease pathogenesis and therapeutics - The power of 3D skin models’. During her PhD, she developed mini-organs as models for human skin, which have enabled important discoveries in the field of risk factors for disease and biological functions of proteins in the skin. For this, she was awarded the Willy van Heumen Prize in 2015 by the Stimulation Fund for Alternatives to Experimental Animals.

Better treatment for skin diseases

After her PhD, Van den Bogaard conducted research at Pennsylvania State University, after which she started her own line of research at the Department of Dermatology at Radboud university medical center in 2015 with a Veni grant from the Dutch organization for science NWO. In 2018, Van den Bogaard was appointed head of the Laboratory of Experimental Dermatology. Here she combines her knowledge of three-dimensional skin models with molecular tissue analyses to study the skin of individual patients. By better understanding how certain risk factors underlie skin diseases, she hopes to discover new ways for better treatments in the future.