Description:
Reference #: 01319
The University of South Carolina is offering licensing opportunities for a culture medium for human skin explants that enables molecular studies.
Background:
The ability to work with human explants over a period of seven (7) days allowed researchers to validate findings obtained in a preclinical mouse model of eczema. This represents an important step towards translational research prior to the initiation of human studies.
Invention Description:
A culture medium was developed to maintain human skin biopsies in culture for up to seven (7) days. This medium allows for the identification of mast cells, important in allergy, inflammation, and cancer research, and their activation status upon exposure of the epidermis layer to different chemicals. This medium also allows gene and molecular expression analyses in human biopsies after exposure to different chemicals.
Potential Applications:
Cellular and molecular analyses, pharmaceuticals, dermatology, allergy and immunology research, skin oncology, and inflammation research.
Advantages and Benefits:
This culture medium allows for the collection of intermediate data between preclinical animal models and full human studies to assess the success potential of interventional human studies, without requiring IRB approval.
De-identified fresh human biopsies obtained from a tissue network or a pathology department are under IRB exemption #4 and do not require an IRB-approved protocol, conversely to interventional human studies, yet can provide relevant mechanistic information to disease pathogenesis.