Artificial human skin paves way to new skin cancer therapy: Research
Research group from the University of Copenhagen has succeeded in halting invasive growth in a skin cancer model using artificial human skin
Published Date – 12:50 AM Thu – 9 Mar 23
Copenhagen: A research group from the University of Copenhagen has succeeded in halting invasive growth in a skin cancer model using artificial human skin.
The study is published in Science Signaling and looks at what exactly happens when a cell turns into a cancer room.
“We are studying one of the signaling pathways of cells, the so-called TGF beta pathway. This pathway plays an important role in the communication of the cell with its environment, and it regulates, for example, cell growth and cell proliferation. division. If these mechanisms are damaged, the cell can turn into a cancer cell and invade the surrounding tissues, ”explains Hans Vandal, professor and team lead at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen.
Under normal circumstances, your skin cells won’t just invade the hypodermis and start wreaking havoc. Instead, they will produce a new layer of skin. But when cancer cells emerge, the cells don’t respect the boundaries between the layers of the skin, and they start invading each other. This is called invasive growth.
Hans Vandal and his colleagues are studying the TGF beta pathway and implementing methods to block invasive growth and thus stop aggressive growth in skin cancer.
“We already have various drugs that can block these signaling pathways and that can be used in testing. We have used some of them in this study,” said Dr. explains co-author Sally Dabelstein.
Hans Vandal and Sally Dabelstein collaborated with Dr. Zilu Ye and Professor Jesper V. Olsen from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research in the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences.
“Some of these drugs have already been tested on humans, and some are in the process of being tested in relation to other types of cancer. They can also be tested specifically on skin cancer,” she says.
Artificial skin is closest to real human skin The artificial skin used by researchers in the new study consists of artificial, genetically manipulated human skin cells. Skin cells are produced on the subcutaneous tissue made of collagen. It grows cells in layers like real human skin.
In contrast to mice models, the skin model, which is another term for artificial skin, allows researchers to introduce artificial genetic changes relatively quickly, providing insight into the systems that support skin growth and renewal. Is.
In this way they are able to reproduce and follow the development of other skin disorders, not just skin cancer.
“By using artificial human skin we have overcome a potentially problematic hurdle of whether test results on mice models can be transferred to human tissue. Previously, we have used mice models in most studies of this type. Instead, we can now conclude that these substances are probably not harmful and may work in practice, because the artificial skin means we are closer to human reality,” says Hans Vandal.
The artificial skin used by the researchers is similar to skin used to test cosmetics in the European Union, which banned animal testing in 2004. However, the artificial skin doesn’t allow researchers to test the drug’s effect on the whole organism, explains Hans Vandal. The skin model used here has been used by cosmetics companies since the mid-1980s.
“We can study the effect focusing on the individual organ – the skin – and then we gain experience in relation to how the molecules work, while we seek to determine whether they affect the structure and health of the skin.” damage skin cells,” he says.