Skimune® Sensitisation and Immunotoxicity Testing
Skimune® Sensitisation and Immunotoxicity Testing is based on a human tissue explant model, including measurements of T-cell proliferation and cytokine release, as well as tissue-specific damage assessment. Skimune® is developed to test for sensitization and immunotoxicity in the skin and can also serve as a test for general systemic immune responses. With Skimune®, it is possible to detect and characterize adverse immune responses induced by new chemicals, pharmaceuticals, biologics, and cells in vitro.
Overview of Skimune®
Monocytes isolated from blood samples of volunteers are used to generate dendritic and T cell populations. Exposure of the tested substance to dendritic cells (DCs) may lead to maturation of DCs. These DCs are then cocultured with autologous T cell populations to induce a T cell-mediated response. Finally, these cells are co-cultured with the autologous skin explant to assess lymphocyte-mediated tissue damage. The damage are characterized by histological assessment, immunohistochemistry (IHC), quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and other methods.
- Histopathological analysis on the skin, and damage graded from I-IV
- ELISA / multiplex MSD / Luminex analysis of culture supernatants
- qPCR / mRNA expression
- High throughput RNAseq analysis
- Immunohistochemistry (IHC)
Figure 1. Overview of Skimune® Human Tissue Assay System
Benefits of Skimune®
- Enabling a detailed understanding of immunotoxicity in different age groups, genders, and other demographic characteristics using primary human tissues from different donors
- Independent of 2D cell culture
- Analyzing key events in the sensitization pathway including keratinocyte responses, dendritic cell activation, T cell proliferation and organ tissue responses
- Saving time and money in product development compared to other available testing
- distinguishing the types of allergic reactions
Figure 2. Skimune® complying with the current OECD sensitization guideline process
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