Lip cells spell new treatments
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Swiss scientists have achieved a medical first by growing human lip cells in the lab.
The breakthrough could transform testing and treatments for lip injuries and infections by offering a realistic, lab-based alternative to scarce primary tissue samples.
Human lips have complex skin that serves various functions, making it difficult to grow in controlled settings.
Using donated lip cells, researchers at the University of Bern, in collaboration with Bern University Hospital, created a continuously replicating cell model - a scientific milestone that could pave the way for improved treatments for cleft lips and other conditions.
The research team ‘immortalised’ the lip cells by deactivating a gene that normally limits cell life span and manipulating telomeres, which control cellular ageing.
This allowed the cells to replicate indefinitely while maintaining stability and avoiding cancerous changes.
“The lip is a very prominent feature of our face. Any defects in this tissue can be highly disfiguring. But until now, human lip cell models for developing treatments were lacking,” said Dr Martin Degen, lead researcher.
Laboratory tests confirmed that these cells responded to wounds and infections just as natural lip cells would.
Sourced from patients with lip injuries and cleft lip conditions, the cells formed a model that reliably reproduced normal healing behaviour.
When scratched, the cells closed the wound in eight hours, even faster when exposed to growth factors.
The team also exposed the cells to Candida albicans, a fungal pathogen, which rapidly infected the model just as it would real lip tissue.
The 3D model’s ability to replicate lip skin’s response to infection and wounding offers promising applications for personalised medicine, tissue engineering, and dermatology.
In the long term, researchers expect the model to help replace animal testing for similar conditions, while offering a platform to characterise and purify various lip cell types for more targeted research.
The full study is accessible here.
