Spotlight on Emerging NETSKINMODELS

I am Jos Smits, a Staff Scientist from the Radboud University Medical Center (Radboudumc) in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. My research interests are in chronic inflammatory diseases, such as atopic dermatitis, and ways of modeling the disease. Our laboratory specializes in epidermis cell culture models and over the years we developed methodologies to include genetic risk factors, disease-related bacteria and fungi, and disease-associated proinflammatory mediators into complex epidermal model systems. In parallel, we are implementing technologies such as impedance spectroscopy to measure and study epidermal barrier functions during cell culture and we use our epidermal model systems to study keratinocyte biology, epidermal homeostasis and functional barrier formation in the context of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR). This brings our model systems to use in fundamental and applied research focused on disease pathogenesis, therapeutic developments and drug repurposing. The NETSKINMODELS COST action has brought invaluable opportunities to broaden my professional network, to disseminate some of my knowledge, and to get a sense of the various developments happening in epidermal and full thickness skin models community. It has sparked ideas for my own research and broadened my overall interest in skin modelling systems. The organization of a Training School on CRISPR/Cas9, taking part and teaching in the Training School on 3D models in our laboratory, hosting a successful STSM, and recently taking over the WG2 leadership, together with Sandra Simoes, from Ellen van den Bogaard and Christina Guttmann-Gruber, provided me with ample opportunities to connect with other researchers and to work on some of my soft-skills.