Susan Gibbs PhD

Prof. Dr Sue Gibbs studied human biochemistry and physiology at Sheffield University, England, and went on to obtain her PhD in 1991 at the Department of Molecular Genetics, Leiden University. Her entire career has focused on human skin and oral mucosa biology, and in particular in animal alternative methods to develop novel therapeutic strategies for treating and preventing human disease. As a Postdoc in LUmc (1993), the development of ‘in vivo like’ human skin and oral mucosa equivalents was her major interest. She became head of the Dermatology Laboratory, VUmc in 2001. This position opened the opportunity to expand the research on tissue-engineered skin for human clinical wound healing and in vitro alternatives for animal tests.

In July 2012, Prof Gibbs’ leading position in the field of skin tissue engineering was awarded a chair as Professor of Skin and Mucosa Regenerative Medicine. This unique position is jointly supported by the Amsterdam University Medical Centre and the Academic Centre for Dentistry Amsterdam (ACTA). In 2015, she received the national ‘’Lef in the Lab’’ prize by the Dutch Animal Protection Society for her immune-competent skin-on-chip project which has the potential to provide a personalized medicine approach to treating cancer. In 2018 she became a staff member in the Molecular Cell Biology and Immunology, at Amsterdam UMC to further realize the potential of human health and disease model technologies.