ABSTRACT
During the last decade tissue engineering became a progressing field in biotechnological research. The vision of medical treatment of burnt patients, the treatment of ulcera, and the idea of reconstructing damaged organs revealed very rapidly further possibilities. Tissues resembled not only morphologically the situation in vivo but also revealed comparable physiology. This made artificial tissues interesting for testing efficacy of pharmaceutical and cosmetics products. The development of the tissue models was paralleled by an increasing demand in using alternative methods for the identification of toxicological hazards inherent to raw material with the vision to replace animal testing for human safety assessment in toto.
