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Review
. 2016 May;13(5):451-6.
doi: 10.1080/14789450.2016.1177462.

Lipidomic analysis of epidermal lipids: a tool to predict progression of inflammatory skin disease in humans

Shan Li  1 , Gitali Ganguli-Indra  1   2 , Arup K Indra  1   2   3   4   5
Affiliations
Review

Lipidomic analysis of epidermal lipids: a tool to predict progression of inflammatory skin disease in humans

Shan Li et al. Expert Rev Proteomics. 2016 May.

Abstract

Introduction: Lipidomics is the large-scale profiling and characterization of lipid species in a biological system using mass spectrometry. The skin barrier is mainly comprised of corneocytes and a lipid-enriched extracellular matrix. The major skin lipids are ceramides, cholesterol and free fatty acids (FFA). Lipid compositions are altered in inflammatory skin disorders with disrupted skin barrier such as atopic dermatitis (AD).

Areas covered: Here we discuss some of the recent applications of lipidomics in human skin biology and in inflammatory skin diseases such as AD, psoriasis and Netherton syndrome. We also review applications of lipidomics in human skin equivalent and in pre-clinical animal models of skin diseases to gain insight into the pathogenesis of the skin disease. Expert commentary: Skin lipidomics analysis could be a fast, reliable and noninvasive tool to characterize the skin lipid profile and to monitor the progression of inflammatory skin diseases such as AD.

Keywords: Netherton syndrome; Skin; atopic dermatitis; barrier; corneocytes; lipidomics; mass spectrometry; psoriasis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of interest

The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
A typical lipidomics analysis workflow on a human SC sample.
Figure 2
Figure 2
A representative example of an extracted-ion chromatogram in the positive ion mode from LC-MS analysis of human skin: (A) normal healthy skin and (B) atopic dermatitis skin. NA: non-atopic; AD: atopic dermatitis. cps: counts per second.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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