Development of an alternative method to animal test for evaluation of skin-irritation

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25630374
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Biofunction/Bioprocess
• Research Institution: Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
• Principal Investigator: TAKAGI Masahiro 北陸先端科学技術大学院大学, マテリアルサイエンス研究科, 教授 (00183434)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: リポソーム / 界面活性剤 / 皮膚刺激性 / 動物実験代替法

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We studied about development of an alternative method of Draize test(Animal Test for Skin Irritation). Comparing the membrane dynamics of TritonX-100(Irritant) with that of Tween20 (Non-irritant), we considered that the degrees of irritation by surfactants could be predicted qualitatively. The dynamics induced by SLES was similar to that induced by TritonX-100. On the other hand, the dynamics induced by amino acid surfactants(FLDS-L, ACMT-L) were similar to the dynamics induced by Tween20.
We observed the membrane invagination and pore formation for irritating surfactant. On the other hand, the large deformation could not be observed in the case of non-irritating surfactant. The deformation process was analyzed by the acquisition of the excess surface area. In order to acquire the excess surface area, the surfactant molecules should be included in the inner leaflet of bilayers to obtain the excess surface area. Based on this idea, we proposed a new model for skin-irritation.

Free Research Field

生体機能工学