Inta Gribonika, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Division of Molecular Hematology, Lund University, Sweden

Dr. Inta Gribonika Awarded Michelson Prize for Proposal to Study How Helpful Bacteria Living on Skin Boost Immune Protection

The Michelson Medical Research Foundation has awarded a 2026 Michelson Prizes: Next Generation Grant to Dr. Inta Gribonika in recognition of her proposal, “Unravelling the Cutaneous Humoral Immunity for Topical Barrier Immunization,” exploring how helpful bacteria living on our skin boost immune protection. This work could lead to new topical treatments and innovative vaccine approaches that improve the skin’s ability to block infections.

About

Dr. Gribonika is an Assistant Professor and group leader in the Department of Laboratory Medicine, Division of Molecular Hematology at Lund University in Sweden. She earned a BSc in biology from the University of Latvia (Riga, Latvia), where she worked on virus-like particle nanotechnology in the lab of Prof. Kaspars Tars. She was awarded a Marie Curie ITN fellowship to pursue doctoral training in immunology with Prof. Nils Lycke at the University of Gothenburg (GU) (Göteborg, Sweden), where she studied mucosal immune responses to oral antigens. As a postdoctoral researcher, she then joined the lab of Prof. Jonas A Nilsson at Sahlgrenska Center for Cancer Research, GU, to focus on the epigenetic remodeling of uveal melanoma, followed by postdoctoral training in the lab of Dr. Yasmine Belkaid (NIAID/NIH, USA), where she focused on skin’s humoral immunity to commensal microbiota.