Journal: Micromachines

Article Title: 3D Artificial Skin Platform for Investigating Pregnancy-Related Skin Pigmentation

doi: 10.3390/mi15040511

Figure Lengend Snippet: Research background, experimental setting, and schematic figure of the research. ( a ) Comparison of the skin of pregnant and non-pregnant women. In general, pregnant women have more pigmentation than non-pregnant women, due to the overexpression of melanocytes with various causes. ( b ) Dynamic culture setting with skin-on-a-chip and pump in the incubator. ( c ) Overall scheme of the study. We demonstrated that melanin, located in the basal layer of the skin’s epidermis, is upregulated by the changing body environment when a woman becomes pregnant, causing pigmentation in the form of 3D artificial skin. To realize 3D artificial skin, cells were seeded inside and outside the bilayer hydrogel and inserted into the Artificial Skin Platform for dynamic culture. Comparative analysis of the 3D artificial skin cultured on the Artificial Skin Platform with the 2D static cultured cells under the same culture conditions showed that the melanin expression tendency of the 3D artificial skin was more similar to that of pregnant women than the 2D cultured cells.

Article Snippet: Culture media was Melanocytes Media (MelM; ScienCell Research Laboratories, Cat. No. 2201, Carlsbad, CA, USA) containing 1% Melanocyte Growth Supplement (MelGS; ScienCell Research Laboratories, Cat. No. 2252, Carlsbad, CA, USA), 1% P/S, 0.5% FBS.

Techniques: Comparison, Over Expression, Cell Culture, Expressing