Drugs tested on lab-grown skin

SCIENTISTS have created a viable alternative to animal testing of pharmaceuticals with skin grown in a lab.

Researchers at Dundee University hope the discovery will transform the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries.

Dr Robyn Hickerson and Dr Michael Conneely began developing the skin at the university’s school of life sciences for their drug discovery programmes.

They set up a company Ten Bio Ltd and have created a patented, human skin culture that mimics living skin, and signed a contract with a global cosmetics company. Their firm’s product, called ‘TenSkin’, mimics intact, living skin on the body.

The team say that by doing this they have provided a state-of-the-art tool for skin biology research and pharmaceutical and cosmetics testing.

Dr Conneely said: ‘The skin that covers our body is under tension. Other models don’t incorporate this tension, and this is why our product is more effective.

‘We have created a model that will allow pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies to generate pre-clinical data that will be much more predictive of what is likely to be seen in the clinic.’

Although there is a complete ban on testing cosmetics and their ingredients in animals in the EU, animal experimentation is still standard within the field of pharmaceuticals.

This is done to help explore whether potential drugs are suitable for testing in humans.

Dr Hickerson said: ‘Upwards of 90 per cent of drugs that are proven safe and effective in animals fail during clinical trials. Our model will reduce this costly failure rate.’