BioProject

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the skin for which no cure has emerged. Its complex etiology requires the development of an in vitro model that appropriately recapitulates the physiopathology of this disease. In this study, we exploited the self-assembly method in order to develop a new tissue-engineered model of psoriatic skin substitutes. To circumvent the addition of immune cells, we supplemented the reconstructed psoriatic substitutes with a cocktail of four cytokines, TNF-α, IL-1α, IL-6 and IL-17, and monitored their impact on global gene expression by DNA microarray. The cytokines-supplemented substitutes have a more irregular epidermis, with protuberances and much thinner areas. Most interestingly, gene profiling on microarrays identified several genes reported as being deregulated psoriasis skin in vivo. Indeed, expression of the S100A12, IL8, DEFB4A and KYNU genes increased dramatically compared to their level in normal skin substitutes (P <0.005 to <0.05). In addition, the ACSBG1 gene, reported to be repressed in psoriasis, was also repressed in the cytokines-supplemented psoriatic substitutes compared to the controls (P <0.005). The product encoded by the genes deregulated in the cytokines-supplemented substitutes belong to biological pathways, such as the inflammatory and the immune responses, that are similarly altered in psoriasis in vivo. In conclusion, addition of cytokines to involved psoriatic substitutes alters the transcriptome of these cells in a manner similar to that observed with psoriasis in vivo. The addition of this pro-inflammatory cocktail, comparable cytokine in vivo psoriasis, prepares us for the next step: the characterization of the model once added immune cells. Overall design: Tissue-engineered psoriatic human skin (TEPHS) cultivated with (number of replicates: 3) or without (number of replicates: 3) Cytokines (IL-17a, IL-6, IL1a, TNF-a).