Thomas Wiesner receives award for advances in dermatology research

Thomas Wiesner is breaking new ground to find novel mechanism-based cancer therapies. Following medical school, he wrote his thesis on the genomic aberrations of cutaneous lymphoma and completed his residency in dermatology at the Medical University of Graz. He then spent five years conducting basic and translational research at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and at the Harvard Medical School. His studies resulted in key discoveries, in particular concerning the genomic landscape of skin tumours.

In August 2016, Thomas Wiesner joined the Group of Anna Obenauf at the IMP. Based on his experience as a physician-scientist and his access to high-quality clinical samples, he plans to combine high-throughput sequencing technologies, computational approaches and functional assays in order to define the relevant genomic and epigenomic aberrations in skin cancer and pave the way for new mechanism-based cancer therapies.

The LEO Pharma Research Foundation was established in 1947 by Knud Abildgaard. To honour and promote significant achievements in healthcare research, the Gold and Silver awards were founded in 2008. These are presented to young scientists whose work represents an extraordinary contribution to medical research. Candidates are selected by the European Society for Dermatological Research (ESDR).