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Effect of Fibrin Concentration on the In Vitro Production of Dermo-Epidermal Equivalents.

ABSTRACT: Human plasma-derived bilayered skin substitutes were successfully used by our group to produce human-based in vitro skin models for toxicity, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical testing. However, mechanical weakness, which causes the plasma-derived fibrin matrices to contract significantly, led us to attempt to improve their stability. In this work, we studied whether an increase in fibrin concentration from 1.2 to 2.4 mg/mL (which is the useful fibrinogen concentration range that can be obtained from plasma) improves the matrix and, hence, the performance of the in vitro skin cultures. The results show that this increase in fibrin concentration indeed affected the mechanical properties by doubling the elastic moduli and the maximum load. A structural analysis indicated a decreased porosity for the 2.4 mg/mL hydrogels, which can help explain this mechanical behavior. The contraction was clearly reduced for the 2.4 mg/mL matrices, which also allowed for the growth and proliferation of primary fibroblasts and keratinocytes, although at a somewhat reduced rate compared to the 1.2 mg/mL gels. Finally, both concentrations of fibrin gave rise to organotypic skin cultures with a fully differentiated epidermis, although their lifespans were longer (25-35%) in cultures with more concentrated matrices, which improves their usefulness. These systems will allow the generation of much better in vitro skin models for the testing of drugs, cosmetics and chemicals, or even to "personalized" skin for the diagnosis or determination of the most effective treatment possible.

SUBMITTER: Montero A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8269027 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:To obtain a separation of the epidermal and dermal compartments in order to examine compartment specific biological mechanisms in the skin we incubated 4 mm human skin punch biopsies in ammonium thiocyanate (NH4SCN). We wanted to test 1) the histological quality of the dermo-epidermal separation obtained by different incubation times 2) the amount and quality of extractable epidermal RNA, and 3) its impact on sample RNA expression profiles assessed by large-scale gene expression microarray analysis in both normal and inflamed skin. At 30 minutes incubation, the split between dermis and epidermis was not always histologically well-defined (i.e. occurred partly intra-epidermally) but varied between subjects. Consequently, curettage along the dermal surface of the biopsy was added to the procedure. This modified method resulted in an almost perfect separation of the epidermal and dermal compartments and satisfactory amounts of high-quality RNA were obtained. Hybridization to Affymetrix HG_U133A 2.0 GeneChips showed that ammonium thiocyanate incubation had a minute effect on gene expression resulting in only one significantly downregulated gene (cystatin E/M). We conclude that epidermis can be reproducibly and almost completely separated from the dermis of 4 mm skin biopsies by 30 min incubation in 3.8% ammonium thiocyanate combined with curettage of the dermal surface, producing high-quality RNA suitable for transcriptional analysis. Our refined method of dermo-epidermal separation will undoubtedly prove valuable in the many different settings, where the epidermal and dermal compartments need to be evaluated separately. Upper buttock skin in 4 healthy subjects was exposed to sodium lauryl sulphate, or sampled directly. For each subject, 4 biopsies were obtained: Two from inflamed skin, and two from adjacent normal skin. One irritated and one normal skin sample was placed directly in RNAlater. The remaining two samples were incubated in ammonium thiocyanate for 30 minutes at RT and then placed in RNAlater without performing any separation of the dermal and epidermal layers. This was done to investigate the effect of 30 minutes treatment with ammonium thiocyanate on both inflamed and non-inflamed skin. Data was normalized with quantile method (matrix 1) Forearm biopsies from 13 volunteers were separated to epidermis and dermis by use of ammonium thiocyanate. For comparison of full skin and epidermis without irritation, data from identical probe sets from HG_U133A 2.0 and HG_U133 plus 2.0 was extracted and normalised as one data set using quantile method (matrix 2).

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Effect of Fibrin Concentration on the In Vitro Production of Dermo-Epidermal Equivalents.

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