Lab Grown Skin Could Replace Animal Testing

Researchers have successfully grown swaths of human skin from stem cells, creating a new and viable option for drug and cosmetic testing that currently involves the use of animals for early phase trials.

A study recently published in Stem Cell Reports details how researchers from the University College of London and Aristotle University of Greece combined their efforts to successfully grow lab-made swaths of living human skin from stem cells.

While past stem cell research has made human skin before -- it is one of the most simple of stem-cell procedures -- this human skin is the most similar to average human skin ever created, as it has a "permeable epidermal barrier," according to the authors of the study.

According to the study, researchers managed to grow skin cells from an adult stem cell in the lab after stimulating it to reproduce more cells. Unlike the controversial embryonic stem cell, the adult stem cell can only create cells like its surrounding tissue. In this way, a muscle stem cell can only create muscle tissue, or a heart stem cell can only create cells to help repair the heart.

However, while limited, these amazing cells have been used to recreate or repair entire organs, such as the incredibly complex human lung.

Unlike the lung, growing skin tissue from stem cells is a relatively simple procedure, but the research team had to develop a few very specific techniques that help that skin tissue become viable for cosmetic and drug testing.

According to the study, one of the key factors to creating true-to-human skin tissue was a low humidity environment. This factor helped create a permeable barrier on the outside of the skin making it very similar to the skin of an average human being.

Other techniques were developed by the researchers to help manipulate how the skin tissue's barrier presented itself , allowing for easy study of skin conditions such as ichthyosis or eczema.

The success of this work also shows the scientific community that there is now a perfectly viable alternative for animal testing for skin products .