Significance: Recent generation of bioengineered human skin allowed the efficient treatment of patients with severe skin defects. However, the optical and biomechanical properties of these models are not known.
Aim: Three models of bioengineered human skin based on fibrin-agarose biomaterials (acellular, dermal skin substitutes, and complete dermoepidermal skin substitutes) were generated and analyzed.
Approach: Optical and biomechanical properties of these artificial human skin substitutes were investigated using the inverse adding-doubling method and tensile tests, respectively.
Results: The analysis of the optical properties revealed that the model that most resembled the optical behavior of the native human skin in terms of absorption and scattering properties was the dermoepidermal human skin substitutes after 7 to 14 days in culture. The time-course evaluation of the biomechanical parameters showed that the dermoepidermal substitutes displayed significant higher values than acellular and dermal skin substitutes for all parameters analyzed and did not differ from the control skin for traction deformation, stress, and strain at fracture break.
Conclusions: We demonstrate the crucial role of the cells from a physical point of view, confirming that a bioengineered dermoepidermal human skin substitute based on fibrin-agarose biomaterials is able to fulfill the minimal requirements for skin transplants for future clinical use at early stages of in vitro development.
Keywords: absorption; bioengineered skin; fibrin-agarose biomaterial; optical properties; scattering.