Engineering an actuated model of human skin
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Engineering an actuated model of human skin
IRAS ID
247719
Contact name
Sara Correia Carreira
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Bristol
Duration of Study in the UK
6 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Developing realistic laboratory models of human skin is important because they can reduce animal testing in the safety assessment of drugs and cosmetics. A major limitation of current skin models is that they don’t mimic the stretching and bending that skin experiences in real life. It is important to incorporate these motions because they can influence how substances penetrate through skin, or how wearable devices perform when skin is moving. The aim of this project is to develop a laboratory model of human skin that incorporates its natural movements. This will be achieved by interfacing lab-grown skin with soft robotic actuators, which function like artificial muscles that can stretch and bend the skin. Delivering mechanical stimulation to lab-grown skin can also improve the quality of skin grafts used to treat burns and wounds. Currently, these grafts are grown in the lab without ever experiencing the mechanical stresses they will encounter once they are applied to the patient. This means they don’t build up the toughness and structure of natural skin, which may be a reason for skin graft failures, such as tears. Therefore, this project works towards better laboratory models of human skin and better skin grafts to treat wounds. To engineer human skin in the lab as proposed here,it is necessary to extract human skin cells from discarded skin samples. These are generated during routine plastic surgery procedures (e.g. tummy tucks) and would usually go to waste.
REC name
East of England - Cambridge East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/EE/0375
Date of REC Opinion
6 Nov 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion