Cutaneous wound healing assay on a 2D microfluidic artificial skin model

초록

The skin is important in body system because it protects our body against pathogen and various stimuli such as temperature change, mechanical impact, and harmful rays and damaged skin is recovered by itself through wound healing process. But skin wound healing process still has many unknown pathological mechanism. To accelerate wound healing research, including high efficiency, well-visualized and mimicked artificial skin tissue is being required. In this research, we fabricated nano-wrinkled surfaces with biocompatible PDMS (Polydimethylsiloxane) polymer to mimic the aligned dermal layer and the surfaces were integrated with microfluidic system. For wound healing research, the skin model has channels to reorganize artificial skin tissue and form artificial wound area using layered flow to chemically remove cells. Quantitative assay for cellular behavior, like wound closure rate, is conducted upon kind of growth factors participate in wound healing phase. We believe that this artificial skin model can be a standard platform in various skin studies as alternative model of animal model and basis of POC device studies for skin diseases diagnosis.