Psoriasis researcher receives award for animal-friendly research
PhD student Thomas Emmanuel from the Department of Clinical Medicine has been awarded the Anna and Dagny Hjerrild Foundation scholarship of DKK 200,000. Thomas Emmanuel conducts research into the inflammatory skin disease psoriasis, and is being honoured for using a special method that completely avoids animal testing.
In his PhD project, Thomas Emmanuel has examined and characterised specific memory cells in the skin and their role in psoriasis. Most of what we currently know about memory cells in the skin is based on animal models in mice, but in order to avoid using animals, Thomas Emmanuel chose a different strategy.
In the project, he used a completely new method called Digital Spatial Profiling (DSP)-Geomix. This method makes it possible to carry out protein or transcriptome analysis of paraffin-embedded human biopsies, and thereby avoid animal testing. Thomas Emmanuel’s meticulous work of implementing the method in his research has great potential – not just for the project in question, but also for researchers working in other specialisations.
Contact
PhD student Thomas Emmanuel MD
Aarhus University, Department of Clinical Medicine and
Aarhus University Hospital, Department of Dermatology
E-mail: thomas.emmanuel@clin.au.dk