The Cell Culture Core serves several main functions. It is a cost-effective, time-saving resource for a) humanand mouse skin cells that are freshly isolated from normal or diseased skin; b) skin equivalents reconstitutedwith normal, immortalized or genetically modified skin cells; c) specialized media; and d) antibodies andmolecular probes for detection of skin specific markers. In addition, it is a center for: a) information regardingmolecular characteristics of skin cells; b) advice in cell culture techniques; and c) development of newtechniques applicable to skin research, such as 3D skin equivalents and tissue engineering useful for woundhealing and pigmentation research. The latter function will be performed in collaboration with the SCIDmouse/Human Xenograft Core and the Tissue Acquisition & Analysis Core of the YSDRC. The coreprovides: 1. Primary cultures of normal human skin cells (melanocytes, keratinocytes, endothelial cells andfibroblasts) from healthy and diseased donors; 2. Nevocytesand primary melanoma cells; 3. Primary andimmortalized mouse cells; 4. Mutant and genetically modified mouse melanocytes, keratinocytes, fibroblasts;5. Co-cultures, e.g., keratinocytes/melanocytes, keratinocytes/endothelial cells, fibroblasts/keratinocytes,fibroblasts/melanocytes, etc; 6) Skin equivalents incorporating any combination of available cell types; 7.Large volumes of cells for specified procedures such as analysis of genetic alterations, global geneexpression by microarray or proteomics, identification and/or purification of cell proteins; 8. Advice andhands on training for growing of cells especially those that have so far proven fastidious, melanocytes fromnevi and primary melanomas from the radial growth phase.Significance: The core provides: easy access to skin cells to investigators who lack the expertise or equipment, orprefer to avoid the labor-intensive process, enjoying instead the highly economical and cost effectiveness of ourservices; high standards, improving the consistency, ease and reproducibility of obtaining skin cells and skinequivalents,; molecular genetic and 'omics' information on normal melanocytes, nevocytes and primary melanomacells.
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