Today I met with Prof. Kees Tenssen, head of the LUMC dermatology department, who I contacted by email about the DA4GA project 2.6g 329m/s and who was really interested in knowing more about the project and his colleague Dr. Abdoel El Ghalbzouri whose expertise is in vitro skin models.
They showed me around the place, all the individual labs and the different kind of research that was going on and they proudly showed me examples of their model: El Ghalbzouri presented two in vitro skin models that were developed by him at LUMC, based on human skin cells (most of which resulted from breast reduction surgery).
One of the models is a thin skin model (only epidermis) which is notably suited for testing skin response to chemical agents in medicines or cosmetics. For scientific research and skin transplantation a thicker model (epidermis and the dermis underneath) is also developed and it was this model that caught my attention because of the possibility of embedding the silk in-between these layers.
