Physician-Scientist in Dermatology, Translational Medicine, Gene Therapy & Rare Disease
Dr. Tali Garin-Shkolnik is a physician-scientist and dermatologist whose work bridges clinical medicine, molecular biology, translational research, and advanced therapeutic development. She is a Senior Physician Researcher in the Department of Dermatology at Rambam Health Care Campus, where her research focuses on inflammatory skin disease, rare genetic disorders, neurogenetic disease, gene therapy, and genome editing. Her research is driven by a translational objective: to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying disease and use those insights to develop new therapeutic strategies for conditions in which current treatment options remain limited.
Research Philosophy
Connecting clinical questions with molecular science to develop therapies for diseases that remain difficult to treat. Dr. Garin-Shkolnik’s research brings together dermatology, disease biology, precision medicine, and advanced therapeutic technologies with the goal of moving discoveries beyond the laboratory and toward meaningful clinical applications.
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The skin is much more than a protective barrier. It is a highly active biological organ, containing specialized immune cells, complex signaling networks, and metabolic systems that constantly interact to maintain tissue health.When these systems become dysregulated, they can contribute to persistent inflammation, abnormal cellular activity, and chronic skin disease.Despite remarkable advances in dermatological treatments, important questions remain unanswered. Why do some patients develop severe disease while others experience relatively mild symptoms? Why do certain treatments work exceptionally well for some individuals but not for others? And why can inflammation return to exactly the same location after the skin appears completely healed?Our research addresses these questions by studying the molecular and cellular processes that drive disease initiation, persistence, and recurrence.A central principle guiding our work is that understanding the mechanisms responsible for disease is essential for developing the next generation of therapies.Rather than focusing exclusively on suppressing visible inflammation, we seek to understand and eventually target the biological processes that allow disease to persist or return.
Dr. Garin-Shkolnik received her MD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Medicine in 2000 and completed her PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2010. Her doctoral research examined the cross-regulation of PPARγ and FABP4 and the molecular pathways linking inflammation and metabolism.Following research training at the Weizmann Institute, she completed her dermatology residency at Rabin Medical Center. Her combined training in medicine and fundamental molecular research has shaped an interdisciplinary approach in which biological mechanisms identified in the laboratory are investigated as potential therapeutic opportunities.
Dr. Garin-Shkolnik’s current work spans two major areas:
Translational Dermatology:
Her dermatology research focuses particularly on inflammatory and immune-mediated skin disease, including psoriasis and cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL). A central theme is understanding the molecular and metabolic pathways that maintain chronic skin inflammation and identifying mechanisms that may be therapeutically targeted. Her earlier work on FABP4 and PPARγ provided the scientific basis for subsequent translational investigation of metabolic regulation in inflammatory skin disease. She is the inventor of a granted patent describing FABP4 as a therapeutic target in skin diseases.
Gene Therapy & Neurogenetic Disorders:
A second major research direction is the development of advanced therapies for rare genetic neurological disorders. Her work includes gene supplementation, gene editing, prime editing, disease modeling, and translational development, with particular emphasis on GRIN2B-related neurodevelopmental disorders. She leads and collaborates on multidisciplinary programs bringing together clinicians, molecular biologists, neuroscientists, geneticists, and gene-therapy researchers. Dr Garin-Shkolnik serves as principal investigator and project coordinator of a gene-editing program targeting GRIN2B-related neurodevelopmental disease. Her publications in this area include research on the functional consequences of pathogenic GluN2B/NMDA receptor variants, patient-derived neuronal models of neurodevelopmental disease, and reviews of NMDA receptors in neurodevelopmental disorders.
A defining feature of Dr. Garin-Shkolnik’s work is the integration of clinical observation with experimental research. Rather than treating clinical dermatology, disease biology, and therapeutic development as separate disciplines, her research seeks to connect them: Patient → Disease Mechanism → Experimental Model → Therapeutic Strategy → Clinical Translation.
This approach includes work with human tissue, cellular and disease models, molecular and metabolic analysis, gene-editing technologies, and preclinical therapeutic development. Her current competitive research programs include projects in both gene editing for GRIN2B-related disease and broader translational therapeutic development.
Alongside her laboratory and translational research, Dr. Garin-Shkolnik remains actively involved in clinical dermatology. She serves as a Senior Physician Researcher in Dermatology at Rambam Health Care Campus and as Chief Principal Investigator for Clinical Trials in Dermatology at the Kahn-Sagol-Maccabi Research and Innovation Center (KSM). She is also a senior dermatologist in a multidisciplinary rheumatology-dermatology clinic for complex patients. This ongoing clinical involvement provides an important foundation for her research, enabling scientific questions to arise directly from unmet clinical needs and allowing promising discoveries to be evaluated with a clear path toward patient application.
Dr. Garin-Shkolnik is involved in the education and supervision of physicians and young researchers. She trains dermatology residents at Rambam, serves as a Clinical Instructor at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and supervises medical research projects. Her work is strongly collaborative, involving researchers and clinicians across dermatology, neuroscience, molecular genetics, metabolism, gene therapy, and genome editing.
Dr. Garin-Shkolnik is a member of professional organizations spanning both dermatology and gene and cell therapy, including the: