Human skin reconstruct models: A new application for studies of melanocyteand melanoma biology

Studies of melanocyte and melanoma biology using monocultures of cells are limited because of culture-induced morphology changes and expression of gen es related to growth, migration, and invasion, which do not reflect the in situ phenotype of normal melanocytes, nevus cells, or melanoma cells from b iologically early progression stages. The development of organotypic cultur es of human skin, in which culture artifacts are greatly diminished and cel l-matrix and cell-cell interactions between different cell types can be inv estigated in a three-dimensional system, has opened a new era for melanoma research. Long-term in vivo studies, especially important for melanomagenes is and melanoma metastasis have become possible through grafting of skin re constructs to immunodeficient laboratory animals. In this review, principle s and different methods of skin reconstruction are introduced with focus on the application for pigment cell biology.