Chapter 18 - Skin Models for Drug Development and Biopharmaceutical Industry

Abstract

Human skin models are widely used for safety testing of cosmetic product ingredients. These tissue models are also gaining increased importance for drug development in pharmaceutical research, as there is a significant potential for new compounds in the dermatological field. As other systems, such as xenografts, are deployable only for a limited number of investigations due to differences in permeability, hairiness, and occurrence of skin abnormalities, there is a strong demand for relevant and organotypic human in vitro skin models. In this chapter we present the most relevant skin diseases and appropriate models that have already been developed. We discuss prerequisites that are critical in drug development processes in the pharmaceutical industry such as model validation, gating studies to enable translation to clinical studies, and biological as well as system-dependent limitations. With the growing establishment of new production techniques and increased knowledge of biological interactions, a new generation of human skin equivalents is emerging that facilitate drug development for dermatological applications.