Skin Culture Model: a Possible Alternative to the Use of Excised Human Skin for Assessing In Vitro Percutaneous Absorption

Abstract

The interest of a Reconstituted Epidermis (REp) model for screening tests in the field of percutaneous absorption has been investigated. A simplified test procedure was elaborated to screen the percutaneous absorption of drugs through human skin. Using compounds with very different physicochemical properties, we compared this new test procedure realized with REp exposed for 14 days at the air–liquid interface to a traditional skin penetration protocol utilized with human skin biopsies and flow-through diffusion cells. Whatever the hydrophobicity of the drugs applied, the screening test protocol elaborated allowed determination, by HPLC measurements, of the ability of each test drug to diffuse through the skin. Interestingly, the magnitude of the drug diffusion linearly correlated between the two test protocols. For compounds applied under a saturated aqueous solution, we observed that their permeability coefficient obtained through REp with the screening procedure was 10 times greater than that found through human skin and a traditional diffusion protocol. From these preliminary results, the test procedure elaborated for screening tests using REp cultures seemed to be a possible alternative to the use of traditional percutaneous absorption protocols carried out with human skin samples.