Doctoral student was granted with young researcher award for psoriasis research

The University of Tartu doctoral student of medicine, junior research fellow Helen Hermann was granted the 2017 Eastern Europe Dermatology Research Fellow Award by the European Society for Dermatology Research (ESDR).

At one of the world’s most important dermatology research conference, the 47th Annual ESDR Meeting in Austria, the Eastern Europe Dermatology Research Fellow Award was presented to doctoral student of medicine, junior research fellow Helen Hermann of the University of Tartu Institute of Biomedicine and Translational Medicine.

Hermann’s presentation was about the inflammatory skin condition psoriasis. “It is quite a frequent skin disease, suffered by two to three percent of the population. The disease may occur in young adults and it has a considerable impact on people’s quality of life. Although psoriasis is partly a hereditary disease, its causes have not been clearly identified yet,” said Hermann.

In her speech at the conference, Hermann described research which studied the role of the protein SERPINB2 in the expression and treatment of psoriasis. “We found that SERPINB2 levels were increased in the psoriatic skin, and our tests in cell culture suggest that this protein may be essential for quicker healing of the skin. We started to investigate SERPINB2 as it was the target gene of the inflammation-suppressing microRNA that we have previously studied. Our results allow to speculate that the regulation of SERPINB2 levels may be an opportunity in psoriasis treatment,” Hermann explained.

This research is a part of Hermann’s doctoral thesis “Immune-regulatory microRNAs in inflammatory skin diseases”, which studies the role of small regulatory RNAs in different inflammatory skin diseases.

Eastern Europe Dermatology Research Fellow awards were given to four young scientists, selected from about 60 researchers who gave a speech at the conference. Besides Hermann, the awards went to Piotr Konieczky of Poland, Csaba Hegedűs of Hungary and Ekaterina Kalabusheva of Russia.

The award is issued by the European Society for Dermatological Research in cooperation with the Austrian Society of Dermatology and Venereology to recognise young researchers.

Additional information:
Helen Hermann
PhD student of Medicine, Junior Research Fellow of Institute of Biomedicine and Translational Medicine;
helen.hermann@ut.ee