Development of in vitro 2D skin model for pathological assay of dermal wound healing

초록

During wound healing process damaged skin is contracted and recovered by skin tissue components. The cellular behavior in skin tissue is changed by various environmental effects and also affects wound healing time and remaining scars. However, wound healing process is difficult to be analyzed in vitro due to its dimensional scale and physiological complexity. Hence, in vitro wound healing assay platform would be helpful for understanding the effects of mechanical and chemical stimuli during wound healing process. In this research, we simply fabricated nano-wrinkled surfaces with biocompatible PDMS (Polydimethylsiloxane) polymer to mimic the aligned cellular scaffolds and the surfaces were integrated with microfluidic system to generate wounds and provide media for cell growth. We formed wound area using laminar flow of Trypsin-EDTA and analyzed the cellular behaviors, specifically cell migration, on the wrinkled surfaces during wound healing progress. We found that simply fabricated nano-wrinkled surface guided the morphology and migration of cells, even the intercellular cytoskeleton structure. The wound healing process showed different spatial and temporal behaviors by the surface patterns (angle and pattern sizes). We expect this 2D skin model can be a useful tool for wound healing research.