In order to evaluate the response of skin to topical preparations a suitable substrate is required that mimics the behavior of skin in an in vitro environment. Actual samples of human skin can be used but there are several problems associated with this practice.
Human skin exhibits high intra and inter donor variability. This makes comparing results of replicates, and inter-laboratory comparison challenging.
Human skin is difficult to handle, stored samples require significant care and preparation before testing.
There are safety issues associated with potential pre-existing infection of samples and contamination during handling. Safety concerns require treatment of the samples that may influence the results of the testing.
Ethical issues prohibit use of human skin in some countries.
The cost of procuring samples, skilled handling requirements and prolonged preparation protocols make the use of human samples expensive. Because of these challenges various synthetic alternatives have been proposed.
In this Application Note we describe three experiments comparing the results of in vitro transdermal release testing experiments comparing human skin to biomimetic membranes.
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