Scientist develop new gelatine model that can stand in for human skin

Scientists at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) are developing a gelatine-based model that simulates the characteristics of human skin by mimicking the way it absorbs water.

By controlling the moisture content in the gelatine, the team plans to use it as an alternative to human clinical trials for testing how skin interacts with textiles, like surgical dressings.

Skin is very useful stuff. Not only does it keep your insides on the inside, it’s a dynamic material that alters its characteristics based on its immediate environment.

According to Empa, the conventional way of testing skin/textile interactions has been to ask volunteers to rub swatches of fabric on their skin and measure the results, but the researchers say that is time consuming, expensive, and risks injuring the subject.

To produce something more controllable that reduces the need for human subjects, Empa researcher Agnieszka Dabrowska has come up with a model that exactly simulates human skin using gelatine with a textile substrate.

Like normal skin, the gelatine version absorbs moisture and alters its properties in the same way, so it interacts realistically with fabrics and other materials.

The model was created by taking normal gelatine, which dissolves in water, embedding it in cotton fibers and treating it with chemicals that cause the protein polymers to form cross links that hold the molecules together and prevent them from dissolving. The result is a substance that absorbs water and swells, smooths, and softens in the same way that skin does.

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