Research - BSSVD

BSSVD & British Skin Foundation Joint Small Grant Award

Entries are now closed for the 2025 British Skin Foundation/British Society for the Study of Vulval Disease Joint Small Grant Award.

The 2024 winning application was awarded to Dr Christos Tziotzios, Consultant Dermatologist at St John's Institute of Dermatology and Senior Lecturer at Kings College London for his study: Genome-wide association study and meta-analysis in female lichen sclerosus.

Genome-wide association study and meta-analysis in female lichen sclerosus

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) compare the genomes from many different people to find genetic markers associated with a particular phenotype or risk of disease. This project will analyse data from UK, Norwegian and Finnish biobank databases to undertake an expanded GWAS for LS. The team has found preliminary evidence significant signals using data from UK Biobank, FinnGen and Hunt databases and this project will expand the GWAS, using the latest available data. The proposed investigation has potential to identify causative genes and immune pathways for vulval LS and provide novel insights into important pathways involved in lichenoid inflammation. This will help guide clinical translational research in this neglected but hugely important disease area and may well enable predictive testing for prognostication and disease stratification.

We are in discussion regarding a further award in 2026 and will update these pages when further information is available.

Research Awards

We are pleased to announce funding opportunities for research into vulval conditions! The BSSVD has collaborated with a major partner - Wellbeing of Women (WoW) - to offer a research award.

BSSVD/WoW Awards:

We are pleased to announce both an Entry Level Scholarship and Postdoctoral Research Fellowship award, in partnership with Wellbeing of Women!
These awards develop future academic leaders and offer up to £20,000 and £30,000 for research aimed at improving outcomes for women with vulval conditions.

For more information, please visit:
BSSVD WoW Entry Level Scholarship
or
BSSVD WoW Postdoctoral Research Fellowship

Call launch: 10 April 2025
Application deadline: 7 July 2025
Application Outcome: Approximately October 2025

Please watch this space for additional funding opportunities!

Please note that we have paused the BSSVD annual grant of £10K (which was previously offered) in light of the joining funding pots.

For more information please contact the BSSVD Research lead Dr Aurora Almadori via the BSSVD email address admin@bssvd.org.

Aims: To explore healthcare professionals’(HCPs) perspectives on the diagnosis of vulval skin disease in primary care through investigating the experiences of HCPs who see women with vulval symptoms, examine female genitalia or perform procedures on female genitalia as part of their job roles.

Objectives:

Primary objective: To explore HCPs’ experiences of seeing women with vulval symptoms and examining the vulva.

Secondary objective: To explore HCPs’ perspectives on barriers to diagnosis of vulval skin disease in primary care, with a focus in vulval lichen sclerosus (VLS).

Tertiary objective: To establish the education and training needs of HCPs in vulval skin disease

Aims: We plan to conduct the ‘FGM Reconstruction Priority Setting Partnership (PSP)’ to identify unanswered questions from the perspectives of women and clinicians, and, upon reaching a consensus, to produce a list of agreed research priorities. These research priorities will then guide future surgical research in FGM and eventually lead to a well-designed clinical trial.

Objectives: The main objectives of PSP are to identify research priorities for women with lived experience of FGM and professionals. Potentially, this could include motivation for seeking surgical reconstruction, relevance of emotional and psychosexual support, outcome assessment tools, and quality of life issues related to surgical treatment.

BSSVD & British Skin Foundation Joint Small Grant Award

Research Awards

BSSVD/WoW Winners

2024

£19,996

2024

£30,000