Standard cell lines for skin/epidermis - which? (Mar/02/2007 )

are there standard cell lines for:

normal keratinocytes building an in vitro (semi-like) epidermis (f.i. an immortal cell line expression tight junctions and adherent junctions)

or alternatively an oncogenic cell line derived from keratinocytes?

standard model(s) for melanocytes? which cell line is predominantly used?

any suggestion is highly appreciated!

I worked almost exclusively on keratinocytes for about 3 years and I can't give you the answer, but I can point you in a direction that may help

use google and pubmed, and type in 'artificial skin'. there are some promising models using rafts of keratinocytes in combination with other epidermal cells. I looked all this up about a year or so ago when we were considering switching to a more realistic model. at that time, we abandoned the idea for two reasons: 1. it was all very proprietary, we couldn't actually find how to do it (think of the money to be made on this process; skin-grafts for burn victims and also research models are two applications that come readily to mind) 2. we decided developing it ourselves would be way too expensive

however, the field may have advanced since I looked into it?

good luck