Dr. Christian Pellevoisin, from the Research and Innovation Division of L'Oréal, the international cosmetics company, attended the TERMIS-EU 2010 conference in Galway to award the ‘L'Oréal Recherché & Innovation’ awards.
L’Oréal Recherché & Innovation Best Poster Award 2010 went to Rossukon Kaewkhaw, Sheffield University, United Kingdom for his poster entitled Adipose-Derived Stem Cells (ASCs) for Peripheral Nerve Repair. The TERMIS-EU L’Oréal Recherchée & Innovation Best Podium Communication Award 2010 was won by Nynke Hosper, University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands with a presentation entitled Wound Healing Effect of Amniocytes derived from a Fetus with a Neural Tube Defect. The awards were open to all young researchers and included an inscribed cut glass trophy and a cash prize.
L'Oréal has been supportive of the TERMIS conference for many years and Dr. Pellevoisin commented on the significant growth in the number of attendees at the 2010 meeting since L'Oréal first became involved.
L'Oréal research has over 3000 employees working in 30 different disciplines associated with cosmetic and dermatological research. They have 18 research centers across the world and a total R&D budget of €609 million annually. L'Oréal has over 100 active cooperation agreements with leading academic and research institutions globally and continues to facilitate scientific interaction with researchers in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine through award schemes such as TERMIS-EU 2010.
Dr. Pellevoisin added ‘One may be surprised to see L’Oréal at TERMIS and yet we have a long history of research in tissue engineering. Dr Prunierras, one of the fathers of human reconstructed epidermis joined our company in 1983. Since this date we have never stopped doing fundamental and applied research in this field. For L’Oréal, skin engineering is a strategic tool to gain a greater understanding of this organ structure and function and also a technology of choice to develop in vitro predictive tests to assess efficacy and safety of our products. Concerning this last point, tissue engineering is a key technology to develop and validate alternative methods to animal testing – Numerous technological and scientific challenges remain and that is why we are here to exchange and to support young researchers. As ever, the level of scientific works presented at TERMIS is extremely high and I would like to thank all the participants and the organizer for the quality of the programme’
Speaking after the award ceremony, Professor Abhay Pandit, chair of the organizing committee of the TERMIS EU 2010 and director of the Network of Excellence for Functional Biomaterials (NFB, Galway) said ‘sponsorship of research awards such as the TERMIS-EU L'Oréal Recherché & Innovation awards heightened the profile of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine research and provided an attractive incentive for young researchers in this field of science. We are delighted with L'Oréal’s continued involvement with TERMIS and hope that these awards will further strengthen scientific innovation and communication at future TERMIS events.
More information on skin engineering at L’Oréal is available at this website; http://www.invitroskin.com
