A. Verma et Aj. Shaw, RECONSTITUTION OF HUMAN SKIN IN-VITRO USING READILY AVAILABLE SOURCES- NOVEL STUDIES OF TUMOR PROMOTION, Toxicology in vitro, 8(4), 1994, pp. 655-657
As part of our development of an assay for skin tumour promoters we ha
ve standardized a three-dimensional model of human skin. The important
features of this model for our purposes are (a) that it is characteri
stic of human skin, (b) that the developing epidermis can be seeded wi
th ''initiated'' keratinocytes, and (c) that the calcium level of the
medium can be controlled. The procedure used is an amalgamation of the
methodologies of Asselineau and Prunieras (1984), Lenoir el al. (1988
) and Rosdy and Clauss (1990). This model does not rely on a source of
human skin and can be reproduced in any laboratory equipped with basi
c cell culture apparatus. The dermal equivalent consists of human embr
yonic fibroblasts and rat tail collagen. The overlying keratinocytes a
re derived from the outer root sheath of human hair follicles inserted
into the collagen-fibroblast gel. Stratification is induced by cultur
ing the epidermal cells at the air interface of a serum-free medium. T
he model has been characterized by histological staining, electron mic
roscopy and immunostaining.