Using artificial human skin, a research group from the University of Copenhagen successfully blocked invasive growth in a model of skin cancer.
The study was published in Scientific signage and examines what actually happens when a cell turns into a cancerous cell.
“We studied one of the cell signaling pathways, the so-called TGF beta pathway. This pathway plays an essential role in the communication of the cell with its environment and controls, for example, cell growth and division. If these mechanisms are damaged, the cell can turn into a cancerous cell and invade the surrounding tissues,” explains Professor and Team Leader Hans Wandall from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen.
Under normal circumstances, your skin cells won’t just start invading the hypodermis and wreaking havoc. Instead, they will produce a new layer of skin. But when the cancerous cells emerge, the cells no longer respect the boundaries between the layers of the skin and begin to invade. This is called invasive growth.
Hans Wandall and his colleagues studied the beta pathway of TGF and applied methods to block invasive growth and thus curb the invasive growth of skin cancer.
“We already have various drugs that can block these signaling pathways that can be used in tests. We used some of them in this study,” says associate professor and study co-author Sally Dabelsteen of the School of Dentistry.
Hans Wandall and Sally Dabelsteen worked with Dr. Zilu Ye and Professor Jesper V. Olsen of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research at the Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine.
“Some of these drugs have already been tested in humans, and others are being tested in connection with other types of cancer. They might also be tested specifically on skin cancer,” she says.
Artificial skin is the closest thing to real human skin
The artificial skin used by the researchers in the new study is made from artificial, genetically manipulated human skin cells. Skin cells are produced on subcutaneous tissues made up of collagen. This causes the cells to grow in layers, just like real human skin.
Unlike mouse models, the skin model, which is another word for artificial skin, allows researchers to relatively quickly introduce artificial genetic modifications, which provide insight into the systems that support skin development and renewal.
This way they are also able to reproduce and follow the development of other skin disorders, not just skin cancer.
“By using artificial human skin, we have overcome the potentially problematic hurdle of whether test results in mouse models can be transferred to human tissue. Previously, we used mouse models in most studies of this type. Instead, we can now conclude that these substances are probably not harmful and might work in practice, because artificial skin means we are closer to human reality,” says Hans Wandall.
The artificial skin used by the researchers resembles the skin used to test cosmetics in the EU, which banned animal testing in 2004. However, the artificial skin does not allow researchers to test the effect of a drug throughout the body, says Hans Wandall. . Skin models like the one used here have been used by cosmetics companies since the mid-1980s.
“We can study the effect by focusing on the individual organ – the skin – and then we harvest experiments on how the molecules work, while looking at whether they damage the structure of the skin and the healthy cells of the skin. skin,” he said. said.
