Reversible Immortalization Of Human Melanocytes Mediated By SV40 Large T Antigen And Cre/loxP Site-Specific Recombinase System

Vitiligo is a common skin disease characterized by the development of white macules and patches associated with local melanocyte loss and/or destruction. The incidence of vitiligo is approximately 0.5 to 2 percent and increasing year by year. The etiology of vitiligo is not completely known, but the observation of circulating antimelanocytic antibodies and CD8 (+) T lymphocytic infiltrations at the margins of lesions in the majority of patients has lent support to the hypothesis that it is an autoimmune disease, whch results in therapeutic difficulties. Patients affected with this ailment have received the benefit of topical and oral medications to fight depigmentation, oral 8-methoxy psoralens and sunlight exposure was initially the only really effective treatment– described over half a century ago– but now there is a whole change of therapies for treating depigmented skin. Though there have many methods to treat vitiligo, such as photochemotherapy, drug treatment and topica therapy, etc., most of them have some side effects or individual difference in therapeutic outcoming. Over the past three decades, diverse surgical methods have been developed. Epidermal grafting, minigrafting, thin dermoepidermal grafts, epidermal suspensions, individual hair gafts and in vitro cultured melanocytes either with epidermal membranes or with pure melanocyte suspensions, are the basic procedures published to date, although a few modifications of some techniques have also been described. Each of these methods has been reported with varying degrees of successful repigmentation and also with a few side effects.Cultured pure melanocyte grafting is a successful repigmentation method of vitiligo therapy. The cultured melanocytes are isolated primarily from normal epidermis of vitiligo patients. The contents of melanocytes in epidermis are very limited which account approximately only 2 percent in total epidermal cells. In vitro cultured melanocytes have no reproductive activity and limited growth ability, some growth factors were used usually in...