[The stripping of cultures of rat keratinocytes]

To develop a stripping model for newborn rat keratinocytes we chose appropriate culture conditions. As it has been shown for human keratinocytes, this model allows to separate the suprabasal cells from the basal cell layer, to obtain a pure population of basal-like cells. One of possible applications of this method was demonstrated in the study on the influence of extracellular matrix components on keratinocyte proliferation. A fraction of basal membrane gel, "the matrigel", was shown to decrease the uptake of 3H-thymidine by keratinocytes in the stripping model.