Daniel Aberdam

Daniel Aberdam completed his first degrees in life sciences at Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris, France) and his PhD at the Weizmann Institute (Israël) on the oncogenic potential of homeotic genes. During his postdoctoral stage, he discovered the identity of genes responsible for severe human skin diseases that then allowed the first antenatal diagnosis for junctional epidermolysis bullosa syndromes. Then, his scientific interests turned on epidermal gene regulation with the identification of skin specific promoters. Then, his group has focused on the physiopathology of stem cells and designed original cellular models from embryonic stem cells that recapitulate embryonic normal and pathological skin and cornea formation. It allows the characterization of genes and signaling pathways involved in these critical steps and their involvement in skin defects found in patients affected by human congenital disorders, like ectodermal dysplasia syndromes. This team was the first to demonstrate the ability of pluripotent stem cells to produce a full thickness skin. More recently, the group used cell reprogramming of patient samples and genome editing to modeling in vitro genodermatoses and eye-related aniridia and identified small compounds able to rescue phenotype. Director of INSERM unit in Nice, he was also Professor at the TECHNION (Haifa, Israel).