Numerous experimental approaches in the field of dermatological research necessarily
require the usage of human primary keratinocytes as immortal cell lines generally
do not appropriately reflect the in vivo situation. However, the utilization of freshly isolated cells is often hampered by
the limited accessibility of human skin biopsies and their derivation from donors
of different age, gender and pathological background, as well as from different body
sites. Recently it has been reported that the umbilical cord epithelium (UCE) expresses
a cytokeratin pattern similar to human epidermis [
[1]
], although the general architecture of the umbilical cord epithelium significantly
differs from the mammalian epidermis [
[2]
]. Furthermore, cells derived from UCE are capable of forming a stratified epithelium
when seeded on fibroblast populated collagen gels [
3
,
4
]. We therefore asked whether the umbilical cord could possibly serve as an alternative
source for primary neonatal keratinocytes and investigated the similarity of UCE cells
and neonatal primary keratinocytes at the molecular and functional level.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 12, 2010
Received:
August 15,
2007
Identification
Copyright
© 2008 Japanese Society for Investigative Dermatology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
