Development of Wrinkled 3-D Skin-Equivalent by Cyclic Uniaxial Stretchable Skin-on-a-Chip

The skin of the human body is in contact with external contact, protecting the inside of the human body, and is experiencing substantial contact, friction, contraction and relaxation. When exposed to such stimuli for a long time, stress may be higher than in a static environment, which may accelerate aging. We have developed a skin-on-a-chip, which uses a force and repulsion principle between electromagnets and permanent magnets to produce aged skin equivalents, which gives fast and strong mechanical deformation to the culture space. In this study, we fabricated wrinkled skin-equivalents by applying cyclic uniaxial stretchable skin-on-a-chip for 3D human fibroblasts and keratinocytes co-culture system. The expression of P53, which is a phenomenon seen in aged skin, and poor protein expression relating to weak skin and aging markers were analyzed through real-time PCR. These results suggest that the cyclic uniaxial stretchable skin-on-a-chip can be used to examine skin aging and as an in vitro tool to evaluate the efficacy of anti-wrinkle cosmetics and medicines.