Dissertation

Development of human skin equivalents to unravel the impaired skin barrier in atopic dermatitis skin

Promotor: J.A. Bouwstra Co-promotor: A. El Ghalbzouri

Author

M.O. Eweje

Date

01 September 2016

Links

Thesis in Leiden Repository

The studies in this thesis describes the barrier defects in Atopic Dermatitis (AD) skin and various techniques to develop AD Human Skin Equivalents (HSEs) which can be used to better understand the role of several factors in the pathogenesis of AD skin. The results described show that Inflammation plays a pivotal role in the development of epidermal and SC features of AD skin and that AD epidermal features can be maintained in vitro when AD skin biopsies are used to generate explant-HSEs. These AD-HSEs can also serve as a tool to screen potential therapeutics for AD and skin barrier repair. However, limitations exist in the complexity and full representation of all possible factors known to influence the development of AD e.g. FLG mutations, other aspects of inflammatory micro-environment, microbe colonization etc.

• atopic dermatitis
• human skin equivalents
• skin barrier function
• stratum corneum