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Carolina Cabalin
Scientist-entrepreneur, PhD(c)
I'm a young scientist-entrepreneur motivated for R&D about the skin infections, skin barrier, microbiota, immunity, and their interplay in health and diseases with expertise in molecular and cellular biology, and clinical studies.
I'm doing a Ph.D. in Medical Sciences at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and my doctoral thesis delved into the properties of vernix caseosa, a proteolipid material produced during skin development in the fetus, and how maternal obesity may influence skin integrity and immunity in the offspring, with a specific focus on atopic dermatitis. Our findings revealed that the vernix holds molecular clues about alterations related to atopic dermatitis during skin development, offering insight into the mechanisms by which maternal obesity may impact skin development.
Besides, I'm CEO & Co-founder at InverSkin, a Chilean biotech company developing MicrobeSkin, a rapid test for skin infections that determines the pathogens, resistance genes, and biomarkers to distinguish infections from colonization.
I'm passionate about technological transfer from University to the industry, moving from bench to bedside interdisciplinary science, teaching, organizing conferences, and making science more collaborative, equal to gender, open, and accessible.
I enjoy traveling with F&F, reading, cooking, and petting cats and dogs in my free time.
R&D interests
My vision is to develop R&D with enthusiasm, passion, encouragement, and commitment to solve the unmet biomedical scientific questions and improve the quality of life of many patients and our society. Also, the labmates' collaborations and outside meetings are essential in my scientific life.
As the CEO of InverSkin SpA, my interest is developing better tools to diagnose and treat skin diseases, increasing the dialogue between industry and university.
As a graduate student at the Translational allergy and immunology (Santiago, Chile) and Dr. Guttman (NY, USA) laboratories, my thesis focuses on how targeting LXR and NF-kb improves the innate immune response against Staphylococcus aureus and atopic dermatitis in human skin keratinocytes and Langerhans cells.
Besides, I study how S. aureus, Staphylococcus hominis, and Staphylococcus epidermidis imbalance affect keratinocytes immunity, mainly in in vitro atopic dermatitis models and patients.
Originally from Chile, my undergraduate research at the Borzutzky lab focussed on several studies about associations between skin, immunity, and microbiota in atopic dermatitis and other inflammatory diseases. With these results, I co-founded InverSkin.