The 3D architecture of native human skin is a crucial requirement in investigating the skin in health and pathologies, wound healing, and assessment of skin cosmetic and care product safety and personalized skin disease treatments. In this research, we used human skin cell lines to build fullthickness skin equivalents (FSE). Engineering artificial 3D tissue models is a known challenge in molecular biology and regenerative medicine not only due to difficulties in fabricating high-resolution scaffolds but in nondamaging monitoring of artificial tissue growth in dynamics. Here we architected 3D laser-printed scaffolds for the comfortable growth and maturation of the FSEs and also developed and validated custom-built combined fluorescence spectrometry (FS) and optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging system for indestructible assessing metabolism and morphology of developing 3D human FSEs. This system demonstrated high sensitivity in detecting fluorescence from nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) and riboflavin 5’-adenosine diphosphate (FAD) in solutions and cell suspensions, and high-resolution imaging of FSE morphology. Thus, our developed FSE on 3D laser-printed scaffolds and dual-mode optical system can be used in the future for nondamaging assessment of metabolism, maturation, and viability of 3D tissue models in growth dynamics.
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