Abstract
Understanding the healthy and diseased state of skin is important in many areas of basic and applied research. Although the field of skin tissue engineering has advanced greatly over the last years, current in vitro skin models still do not mimic the complexity of the human skin. Skin-on-chip and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) might be key technologies to improve in vitro skin models. This review summarizes the state of the art of in vitro skin models with regard to cell sources (primary, cell line, iPSC) and microfluidic devices. It can be concluded that iPSC have the potential to be differentiated into many kinds of immunologically matched cells and skin-on-chip technology might lead to more physiologically relevant skin models due to the controlled environment, possible exchange of immune cells, and an increased barrier function. Therefore the combination of iPSC and skin-on-chip is expected to lead to superior healthy and diseased in vitro skin models.
Highlights
Skin is an essential and complex barrier in the human body
Understanding the healthy and diseased state of skin is important in many areas of basic and applied research ranging from risk assessment of chemicals in healthy skin models to eg. fibrosis and tumor disease models
Despite huge advancements in the field of skin tissue engineering over the last years, 3D in vitro skin models still show weaker barrier properties compared to human healthy skin [8] and do not contain skin appendages or many relevant immune cells and do not mimic the complexity of the human skin
Summary
Skin is an essential and complex barrier in the human body. It has passive functions such as preventing dehydration and it maintains a gradient of gas concentration (O2, CO2, N2). Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) may be an alternative source of cells used in skin tissue engineering, for immune competence, appendages and inter-organ modeling (Fig. 1). Another significant advancement for 3D skin models may be achieved from the field of organ-on-chips, which enable more physiologically relevant conditions to be incorporated into skin models (Fig. 1). We discuss the state of the art with regards to skin-on-chip models and cell sources (primary, cell line, induced pluripotent stem cells) that may enable the step to be taken in skin disease modeling, substance testing, and personalized medicine
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