Peel Test to Assess the Adhesion Strength of the Dermal-Epidermal Junction in Tissue-Engineered Skin.

Innovative therapies combining gene-corrected stem cells and the production of bioengineered tissues to treat epidermolysis bullosa are emerging. However, quantitative tests to measure the adhesion forces between two highly viscoelastic substrates such as those found in bilayered bioengineered skin are needed and are still lacking. The objective of this study was to develop a mechanical test to measure the dermal-epidermal adhesion strength of our bilayered tissue-engineered skin substitute (TES) produced with the self-assembly method.