They manage to print skin in 3D with which they will be able to investigate skin diseases related to the nervous system

2023-09-20 19:25:37

A team of scientists from the Institute of Research, Development and Innovation in Health Biotechnology of Elche (IDiBE) of the Miguel Hernández University (UMH), is working on the development of a type of human skin that is printed using a 3D printer to to be able to understand the causes of various pathologies that affect the sensory nervous system, but that have cutaneous manifestations.

Asia Fernández, professor in the Area of ​​Molecular and Cellular Biology at the UMH and researcher at IDiBE, has explained that until now skin obtained from bioprinting had been used to treat large burns, but that the sensory system was not included. as explained by the academics in a statement.

With this project it is possible to connect the skin organ and the nervous system in order to understand the molecular processes that cause sensory pathologies. It is about uniting the nervous-sensory system with the skin, or what is the same as “connecting and innervating this skin in order to give the skin sensory capacity.”

“It could be very useful not only to understand the molecular mechanisms of dermatological pathologies, but also to study the toxicity of certain drug compounds and even cosmetics to see that they do not cause irritation or alter the skin,” stated Fernández.

With this discovery, new drugs can be discovered to treat diseases such as psoriasis or pruritus. As the IDiBE team at the UMH has discovered, these diseases originate in the peripheral nervous system, which is the one that contains the nerves in the skin.

At the moment, skin cell extractions are being carried out from human samples that have been obtained through surgery and which allow obtaining a sufficient quantity to be able to print the skin. The objective now proposed is to innervate the skin printed with sensory neurons that are obtained through the transdifferentiation (changes in the fate of a cell) of fibroblasts (a type of cell that contributes to the formation of connective tissue). The use of printed skin would help reduce animal testing and create a system very similar to that of humans.

“The results obtained with this study system would be more easily transferable to the clinic and would reduce the failure rate that we find when we try to extrapolate the results obtained in animals to humans,” concluded Hernández.