Harvard Skin Disease Research Center

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Harvard Skin Disease Research Core Center (HSDRC) grant has funded Core services and Pilot and Feasibility Studies throughout Harvard and its affiliated hospitals for nearly 15 years. Our Center's initiatives have helped build a vibrant community of scientists (Research Base) who have made a major impact on biomedical research relevant to skin. Nearly half of the current Research Base members are new additions. Our Core facilities have provided scientists unfamiliar with skin diseases, or skin as a model of disease, with easy access to highly specialized services and resources. Our P&F Project Program has funded 46 innovative proposals over the past ten years. In aggregate, HSDRC funding has led to hundreds of published papers and has enabled many new extramural grants from the NIH as well as other sources. We estimate that the P&F Program alone has yielded a >20-fold "return on investment", as judged by subsequent funding that resulted from the P&F studies. In the present proposal, four service Core facilities are proposed. The Cell Culture Core will provide a broad range of services and unique cells/cell lines to the HSDRC community, and will introduce inducible pluripotent stem cell (IPS) approaches. The Morphology and Cell Analysis Core will provide highly specialized and unique general and molecular pathology services. The Transgenic and Mouse Models Core will provide state-of-the-art approaches to the generation of transgenic mice relevant to the study of skin. The Leukocyte Migration Core will provide unique services to study the biology and biophysics of immune and stem cell migration. Four highly innovative P&F studies are proposed, each of which uses services from at least one of the Cores. Finally, two pilot Cores are proposed, which are supported entirely by institutional funds. A Translational Research Resources Core is designed to facilitate skin disease research using clinical materials and on human subjects, and a Chemical Biology Core will use new and high throughput approaches to screen compounds relevant to skin disease. An Administrative Core, bolstered by considerable institutional support, ensures that the Cores and P&F studies are managed successfully with regard to operations, budget, and resources. We are confidant that the HSDRC will continue to make a major impact on skin diseases research.