Goodbye, fillers: Swiss scientists have successfully grown lip cells in a «test tube»

The skin on the lips is actually somewhat more complex than the skin on the rest of the body, so its primary cells are quite difficult to reproduce in «laboratory conditions». However, a team from the University of Bern in Switzerland has succeeded.

For the study, the team took primary lip cells from two human donors (both were treated for lip injuries), and then used a retroviral vector to deactivate a gene that stops the cell’s life cycle and to change the length of the telomeresTelomere is a stretch of DNA consisting of a large number of repeats located at the end of a linear chromosome. The main role of telomeres is to protect DNA. at the ends of each chromosome, extending the life of the cells themselves.

The created cell lines were thoroughly tested to ensure that their genetic code remained stable during replicationThe process of self-replication of nucleic acids, genes, and chromosomes. and retained the same characteristics as the original cells; and that the cells did not have cancer-like abnormalities. The scientists also confirmed that the cell lines behave like their unmodified primary counterparts in terms of protein and mRNA production.

Finally, tests were conducted to see how the future experimental models would perform in the process of healing or treating infections: the cells closed the wound in 8 hours or less. Also, in the following 3D models, the cells were infected with the fungus Candida albicans (can cause serious infections in people with weak immune systems or hare lips) — as expected, the pathogen «invaded» the model, just as it would with real lip tissue.

In fact, if you think that the new development will help «grow» larger lips, the article will disappoint you — primarily, artificial lip cell cultivation will be useful for treating devastating injuries to the mobile folds of the mouth.

Source: scimex