Department of Dermatology, University Hospital Lausanne
The Department of Dermatology at the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV) belongs to one out of the five University Hospitals in Switzerland. The Hospital drains a population of approximately 1.5 Mio inhabitants from the French-speaking region of Switzerland. The Department of Dermatology has a staff of about 100 people with 30 physicians. It has an outpatient Clinic with 50’000 patients per year, a psoriasis cohort with >400 patients treated with biologics, and a specialized atopic dermatitis consultation. Basic, translational and clinical research are a major focus of the Department, which possesses large 500+ square meter state-of-the-art research facilities with immunohistochemistry lab, facility for storage and processing of samples (RT-PCR, flow cytometry, confocal, cellular assays,…), along with an institutional network with core facilities (Mass cytometry/CyTOF, RNAseq, shotgun sequencing, proteomics on tissue- and single cell-level,…). The Department has also dedicated spaces and personnel (study coordinator and nurses) for phase II and III studies in psoriasis and atopic dermatitis. Over the past years, the Department has been able to build a platform of basic, translational and clinical research in Dermatology with a main focus on psoriasis, in which discoveries deriving from translational studies in the clinics are dissected in the basic lab to provide new understanding and therapeutic approaches for the clinics.
Role within BIOMAP
CHUV will participate in the in-vitro validation experiments of identified biomarkers using state-of-the-art preclinical in-vitro culture models and ex-vivo skin explants. This will allow understanding the role of the biomarker and the perturbed networks in the pathogenesis of psoriasis and atopic dermatitis.
CHUV will also participate in sample collection from patients with psoriasis and atopic dermatitis.