Feasibility of Human Skin Grafts on an Isolated but Accessible Vascular Supply on Athymic Rats as a System to Study Percutaneous Penetration and Cutaneous Injury

摘要

The objective of this research is to determine the feasibility of grafting human skin onto congenitally athymic (nude) rats, and to isolate the grafted human skin as a flap of functional skin on an isolated, but accessible, vasculature. Thereafter, the proposed system is to be characterized as to structure and function of the skin, and finally to be validated as a system for studying percutaneous absorption. The authors have been successful in generating human-rat skin flaps on an isolated and accessible vasculature. To validate the system, the authors have compared blood flow in the flap, absorption of compounds through grafted and nongrafted components of the flap, and have compared absorption across the flap with that which occurs in vitro. These assessments cause us to conclude that this system will be extremely valuable to groups who need accurate assessments of how much of a compound comes across human skin per unit time, and whether it is metabolized as it crosses the skin. Prior to the availability of this flap, these types of analyses simply could not be made in human skin or, for that matter, in animal skin.