Requirements of skin tissue models for high-throughput screening

In vitro skin models can be used in a number of ways, including assessment of the risk or efficacy of different treatments. As the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries prepare for the increased use of such tissue equivalents, the question arises as to the suitability of such test systems for high-throughput screening (HTS). HTS is often defined by the number of samples that can be tested, usually in the range of more than 1000 per day. Typically, HTS requires a number of components, including a suitable (in vitro) biological model, an automated platform, a highly sensitive monitoring system, diverse libraries of well-annotated samples, and data acquisition and processing systems. In addition to using a biological model that reflects the in vivo conditions being studied, the automation system also needs to be validated, meaning it fulfills the necessary criteria of accuracy, precision, specificity, sensitivity, reproducibility, and stability. Even with all these criteria being met, the actual implementation, a screening campaign, can still remain challenging. In this chapter, we will identify and discuss the most important requirements that have to be fulfilled to allow human skin models to be used in HTS approaches.