Emma Guttman, MD, PhD, Waldman Professor of Dermatology and Immunology and System Chair of the Kimberly and Eric J. Waldman Department of Dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, received a philanthropic commitment of $5 million over seven years from Clinique to establish the Mount Sinai-Clinique Healthy Skin Dermatology Center, which she will co-direct with Helen He, MD. The team will conduct forward-thinking research, exploring the biological underpinnings of how skin ages, skin allergies, and inflammatory or eczematous skin conditions, including eczema (or atopic dermatitis) and contact dermatitis. Rooted in a shared mission to conduct dermatological research that improves patients’ lives, the partnership will focus on applicable scientific discovery and leading-edge innovation to modernize allergy science and identify innovative solutions for these skin conditions.
“Years of chronic, inflamed skin play a role in premature aging. Extensive research has helped us understand the molecular map of skin conditions associated with allergy, such as eczema and contact dermatitis, and we’re now at a pivotal point in addressing these conditions and more. With Clinique’s support, we will continue to actively explore targeted approaches to reversing eczematous and allergic skin conditions with the goal of creating and sustaining healthy skin. In turn, we want to use this understanding to address and prevent the process of age-related inflammation or ‘inflammaging’ in the first place,” says Dr. Guttman, who also directs the Center of Excellence in Eczema at Mount Sinai and the Laboratory of Inflammatory Skin Diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Helen He, MD, will explore the biological underpinnings of how skin ages, at the Mount Sinai-Clinique Healthy Skin Dermatology Center.
Dr. Guttman’s Laboratory of Inflammatory Skin Diseases has a major focus on atopic dermatitis, contact dermatitis, alopecia areata, and other inflammatory skin diseases. It has made paradigm-shifting discoveries on the immunologic basis of atopic dermatitis, opening the door to new therapeutics. This work on atopic dermatitis/eczema has contributed directly to many recently developed treatments.
Clinique has a long-standing history of partnering with dermatologists, including its Founding Dermatologist, Norman Orentreich, MD, and incorporating patients’ insights in its innovation since 1968. His children, Catherine Orentreich, MD, and David Orentreich, MD, the brand’s Guiding Dermatologists, continue their father’s legacy. Dr. David Orentreich is Assistant Clinical Professor of Dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and he and Dr. Catherine Orentreich are members of the Mount Sinai Dermatology Advisory Board.
The priority of the Center of Excellence in Eczema is to bridge basic science with practical application in the clinic to improve people’s lives through healthy skin. By investigating healthy skin, along with the skin of those with inflammatory skin conditions who show signs of premature or accelerated aging, the team will aim to learn how to significantly slow the visible signs of aging in all people.
Using a translational approach, which has been so successful in inflammatory skin diseases, the Center’s research will comprehensively characterize the molecular phenotype of skin and blood across a diverse spectrum of age, race, ethnicity, gender, and skin phototype, in both healthy individuals and patients with atopic dermatitis. By using minimally invasive tape strips to sample the skin that will then be analyzed by high- throughput transcriptomic and proteomic assays, the research will unveil important biomarkers of skin aging in both healthy and inflamed disease states. These findings could lead to individualized anti-aging treatments.
The Center’s research will inform Clinique in future product innovation to offer more solutions for people with allergic or sensitive skin. “With Clinique’s support, critical breakthroughs will be fast-tracked and will have a global impact on the study of aging, the treatment of skin diseases, and how patients look and feel in their skin,” Dr. He says.