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Advanced In Vitro Three-Dimensional Skin Models of Atopic Dermatitis

  • Review Article
  • Published:
Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Aims and scope

Abstract

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is one of the most prevalent inflammatory skin diseases that is characterized by eczematous rashes, intense itching, dry skin, and sensitive skin. Although AD significantly impacts the quality of life and the number of patients keeps increasing, its pathological mechanism is still unknown because of its complexity. The importance of developing new in vitro three-dimensional (3D) models has been underlined in order to understand the mechanisms for the development of therapeutics since the limitations of 2D models or animal models have been repeatedly reported. Thus, the new in vitro AD models should not only be created in 3D structure, but also reflect the pathological characteristics of AD, which are known to be associated with Th2-mediated inflammatory responses, epidermal barrier disruption, increased dermal T-cell infiltration, filaggrin down-regulation, or microbial imbalance. In this review, we introduce various types of in vitro skin models including 3D culture methods, skin-on-a-chips, and skin organoids, as well as their applications to AD modeling for drug screening and mechanistic studies.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (2022R1F1A1074813). Also, this research was supported by the Chung-Ang University Research Grants in 2021.

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  1. Department of Systems Biotechnology, Chung-Ang University, Anseong-Si, Gyeonggi-Do, 17546, Republic of Korea

    Hye-Jeong Jang & Jeong-Kee Yoon

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Research Institute of Women’s Health, Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul, 04310, Republic of Korea

    Jung Bok Lee

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Jang, HJ., Lee, J.B. & Yoon, JK. Advanced In Vitro Three-Dimensional Skin Models of Atopic Dermatitis. Tissue Eng Regen Med 20, 539–552 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13770-023-00532-1

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