Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Tissue-engineered skins are the earliest tissue-engineered products applied to the patients. However, some important properties including rapid revascularization, mechanical strength and permanent substitution are not perfect and remain to be improved. Therefore, relevant technical steps are expected to be taken to develop an ideal permanent skin substitute.     
OBJECTIVE: To construct tissue-engineered skins and observe the histological structure.
METHODS: Allogenic acellular dermal matrix (ADM) as the dermal scaffold, pretreated with collagen Ⅳ and fibroblasts, were co-cultured with epidermal stem cells to construct tissue-engineered skins in vitro. Two steps during the co-culture were performed including submerging culture and air-liquid interface culture. Thereafter, the histological structure was observed by light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The constructed tissue-engineered skins were made of two layers including the epidermis and dermis, the former consisted of multi-layer of epidermal cells in different differentiation conditions and the latter was the integral three-dimensional scaffold with intact collagen fibers. Tight connection could be seen between the epidermis and the dermis to form the integrated “skin”. So, in terms of histological structure, the constructed tissue-engineered skin can reach the histological requirements for the full-thick skin substitutes and can be further studied to be used as the replacement materials to repair skin defects in the clinic.