BioCentury
ARTICLE | Emerging Company Profile

Xgene: High throughput skin

April 22, 2002 7:00 AM UTC

Recreating the complex, layered structure of human skin has been the challenge in efforts to provide artificially grown complete skin for grafting and other purposes. Conventionally, the outer epidermis layer, which is made up of keratinocytes, and the dermis under layer, made up of fibroblasts, are grown separately, sometimes with the help of mouse feeder cells, and the two layers are then artificially juxtaposed. However, such artificial skin thus is prone to blistering, as the procedure results in a lack of the naturally occurring keratin filaments and tight collagen matrix connecting the layers.

In creating its cell sorted skin equivalent (CeSSE), Xgene Corp. is able to separate out a homogeneous slurry of human skin cells during cultivation into a bi-layer, mimicking the natural structure. Creating the bi-layers occurs without the need to sandwich independently grown layers, according to the company, which declined to disclose details until its patents issue...