Centre for Materials Interfaces, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, viale Rinaldo Piaggio 34, Pontedera, 56025, Pisa, Italy.
School of Engineering, Institute for Bioengineering, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3JL, UK.
Adv Mater. 2023 May;35(18):e2210034. doi: 10.1002/adma.202210034. Epub 2023 Mar 22.
Driven by regulatory authorities and the ever-growing demands from industry, various artificial tissue models have been developed. Nevertheless, there is no model to date that is capable of mimicking the biomechanical properties of the skin whilst exhibiting the hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity properties of the skin layers. As a proof-of-concept study, tissue surrogates based on gel and silicone are fabricated for the evaluation of microneedle penetration, drug diffusion, photothermal activity, and ultrasound bioimaging. The silicone layer aims to imitate the stratum corneum while the gel layer aims to mimic the water-rich viable epidermis and dermis present in in vivo tissues. The diffusion of drugs across the tissue model is assessed, and the results reveal that the proposed tissue model shows similar behavior to a cancerous kidney. In place of typical in vitro aqueous solutions, this model can also be employed for evaluating the photoactivity of photothermal agents since the tissue model shows a similar heating profile to skin of mice when irradiated with near-infrared laser. In addition, the designed tissue model exhibits promising results for biomedical applications in optical coherence tomography and ultrasound imaging. Such a tissue model paves the way to reduce the use of animals testing in research whilst obviating ethical concerns.
受监管机构和行业日益增长的需求的推动，已经开发出了各种人工组织模型。然而，迄今为止，还没有一种模型能够模拟皮肤的生物力学特性，同时又能表现出皮肤各层的亲水性/疏水性。作为概念验证研究，基于凝胶和硅树脂的组织替代物被制造出来，用于评估微针穿透、药物扩散、光热活性和超声生物成像。硅树脂层旨在模拟角质层，而凝胶层旨在模拟富含水的活体表皮和真皮。评估了药物在组织模型中的扩散情况，结果表明，所提出的组织模型表现出与癌变肾脏相似的行为。该模型可以替代典型的体外水溶液，也可用于评估光热剂的光活性，因为当用近红外激光照射时，组织模型的加热曲线与小鼠皮肤相似。此外，所设计的组织模型在光学相干断层扫描和超声成像的生物医学应用中表现出良好的效果。这种组织模型为减少研究中动物试验的使用铺平了道路，同时避免了伦理问题。
