Matrisome Provides a Supportive Microenvironment for Skin Functions of Diverse Species

A biomaterial
scaffold is a promising tool employed to drive tissue
regeneration. This technology has been successfully applied in human
tissue rebuilding, particularly for the skin. Meanwhile, there is
still room for further improvement, such as maintaining sufficient
functionality of a biomaterial scaffold. Here, we developed a new
decellularization method to generate a complete anatomical skin biomatrix
scaffold with a preserved extracellular matrix (ECM) architecture.
We performed proteomic and bioinformatic analyses of the skin scaffold
maps of humans, pigs, and rats and systematically analyzed the interaction
between ECM proteins and different cell types in the skin microenvironment.
These interactions served to quantify the structure and function of
the skin’s Matrisome comprising core ECM components and ECM-associated
soluble signaling molecules required for the regulation of epidermal
development. We primarily found that the properties of the skin ECM
were species-specific. For example, the composition and function of
the ECM of the human skin were more similar to those of pigs compared
with those of rats. However, the skin ECM of the pig was significantly
deficient in its enzyme systems and immune regulatory factors compared
with that of humans. These findings provide a new understanding of
the role of the skin ECM niche as well as an attractive strategy that
can apply tissue engineering principles to skin biomatrix scaffold
materials, which promises to accelerate and enhance tissue regeneration.