A review of transcriptomics in cutaneous chemical exposure

Monitoring gene expression profiles in the skin using microarrays has become a useful approach to enhance the understanding of dermal function, toxicologic mechanisms, and risk assessment. With respect to cutaneous chemical exposure, there are few transcriptomic studies in the published literature, and these often differ in experimental design and availability of raw data. An assessment of multiple microarray data sets could be advantageous for identifying potential redundant biological mechanisms or genes associated with dermal responses to chemical exposure. As in vivo cutaneous chemical exposure models can vary, extrapolations from analyzing multiple cross-species microarray data sets could aid in identifying a general set of pathways or genes that could guide future study direction and evaluation of dermal toxicologic assessments and potential therapeutic intervention. This review provides a summary of studies in the open literature that utilize transcriptomics in assessing the molecular responses in chemical-exposed skin with an intent of determining whether biomarkers could be identified and the potential for future meta-analyses.