Long-term expression pattern of melanocyte markers in light- and dark-pigmented dermo-epidermal cultured human skin substitutes.

PURPOSE: Transplantation of pigmented tissue-engineered human autologous skin substitutes represents a promising procedure to cover skin defects. We have already demonstrated that we can restore the patient's native light or dark skin color by adding melanocytes to our dermo-epidermal skin analogs. In this long-term study, we investigated if melanocytes in our skin substitutes continue to express markers as BCL2, SOX9, and MITF, known to be involved in survival, differentiation, and function of melanocytes.
METHODS: Human epidermal melanocytes and keratinocytes, as well as dermal fibroblasts from light- and dark-pigmented skin biopsies were isolated and cultured. Bovine collagen hydrogels containing fibroblasts were prepared, and melanocytes and keratinocytes were seeded in a 1:5 ratio onto the gels. Pigmented dermo-epidermal skin substitutes were transplanted onto full-thickness wounds of immuno-incompetent rats and analyzed for the expression of melanocyte markers after 15 weeks.
RESULTS: Employing immunofluorescence staining techniques, we observed that our light and dark dermo-epidermal skin substitutes expressed the same typical melanocyte markers including BCL2, SOX9, and MITF 15 weeks after transplantation as normal human light and dark skin.
CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that, even in the long run, our light and dark dermo-epidermal tissue-engineered skin substitutes contain melanocytes that display a characteristic expression pattern as seen in normal pigmented human skin. These findings have crucial clinical implications as such grafts transplanted onto patients should warrant physiological numbers, distribution, and function of melanocytes.