ABSTRACT
During inflammatory processes following infection, many skin cells produce additional growth factors and cytokines. The presence of a particular growth factor and/or its receptor in the skin raises the question of what effect this growth factor has on the target cells and how this growth factor might regulate processes in the skin. There are basically two approaches using transgenic mice: the loss of function approach abolishes the activity of a particular growth factor; and the gain of function type of approach delivers excess growth factor to the skin. The dimerization process is crucial for the activation of the tyrosine kinase domain and therefore constitutes a target for interrupting the signalling pathways of fibroblast growth factors by a dominant negative mutation in a loss of function type assay. Of the inflammatory cytokines, interleukins-6 and tumor necrosis factor-α have been overexpressed in basal keratinocytes. Keratin promoters have proven to be valuable tools for investigating the role of growth factor in skin.
