The Norwich Skin Platform aims to overcome limitations of human tissue supply to offer a bespoke treatment and analysis service allowing morphological, genetic, proteomic, and immunological changes in primary human skin samples.
Advantages
- human skin explants are the gold standard for analysis of effects of compounds or treatments, since they provide the closest available comparison to human in vivo studies
- access to a regular adult skin supply
- replaces need for animal skin samples in testing
There is an urgent need for provision of human skin samples for research and testing in both healthy aging and disease contexts. This need is driven by public resistance to the use of animal testing, important differences between animal and human skin, and the absence of the complex, three-dimensional skin structure in human skin cell culture.
Studies on skin explants allow the assessment of overall tissue structure, distribution of cells and extracellular matrix components within the different skin layers, and cell signalling as well as detailed molecular transcriptomic analysis.
Access to a regular adult skin supply is difficult for both academic and commercial researchers. As a consequence many studies are performed with skin from very young donors which is known to differ markedly from older donor skin tissue.
The Norwich Skin Platform has been able to secure regular supplies of ethically consented fresh human abdominal skin which allows us to offer a service facilitating development of pharmaceutical and cosmetic therapies.
Principal Investigator
Team led by Dr Jelena Gavrilovic
Further Details
For more information about this licensing opportunity, please contact the IP office.