No description available.

No description available.

This work has been carried out by two students at Södertörn University who are studying business administration with a focus on design and marketing. Marketing is largely about communication, where this essay will deal with the communication of advertising to its consumers. The problem is the paradoxical marketing that women have become recipients of in the skin care industry, where the message and communication with unattainable ideals contributes to unhealthy standards among women. This in combination with the fact that messages are constantly being spread that women should be happy with themselves and their appearance. In this essay, the influence of female millennials on skin care advertisements has been investigated, and the authors have highlighted how female millennials believe that the skin care industry can change its marketing strategy and communication. This impact has been investigated on the basis of the theories Social Identity Theory, Social Comparison Theory and a semiotic analytical part. The respondents were strategically selected through a goal-directed selection, because the respondents needed to be female millennials between the ages of 24-34 who have experience of skin care and skin conditions.Through semi-structured interviews based on an interview guide for each theory, the results indicated that the respondents had strong opinions about the skin care industry's marketing, where it turned out that many feel excluded due to their skin condition. This showed that the female respondents wanted greater transparency in the skin care industry's marketing where different proposals were made for greater diversity and inclusion. The result shown in the study was that unattainable ideals displayed in the skin care industry's advertising are not accepted by female millennials. The women wanted to see a change in marketing communication, where they wanted the ideals that are spread to include all types of skin conditions, gender, ethnicity, ages and looks. In addition, there were proposals to create skin care advertisements that focused on the medical condition instead of the cosmetic approach to the skin.

No description available.

No / A novel approach for identifying synergistic mixtures of skin penetration enhancers promises to transform development of transdermal products, including patches.

No / Nerve growth factor (NGF) has long been recognized as an important mast cell (MC) growth factor. To explore whether other neurotrophins (NTs) of the NGF family, which are widely expressed in mouse skin, affect the numbers and/or functions of MCs we examined the effects of NT-3 on neonatal skin MCs. We demonstrate that TrkC, the high affinity NT-3 receptor, is expressed by virtually all neonatal skin MCs in C57BL/6 mice, which indicates that MCs can respond to NT-3. Skin of neonatal and early postnatal NT-3-overexpressing mice (promoter: K14) displayed significantly and up to twofold increased numbers of MCs during the first 20 days after birth, as compared to wild-type mice. To check whether this increase in MC numbers in NT-3 transgenic mice reflects a higher rate of proliferation, we performed immunohistochemistry, which revealed that only 1-2% of all skin MCs both in NT-3-overexpressing and in wild-type controls showed Ki-67-positive nuclei, suggesting that the observed differences in the number of MCs do not reflect a higher rate of MC proliferation. Additionally, we show that the effect of NT-3 on the number of MCs is most likely to be stem cell factor (SCF)-independent, because NT-3 significantly downregulates secretion of SCF-protein in cultured dermal fibroblasts, as assessed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Numbers of skin MCs in neonatal TrkC-deficient mice were found to be modestly reduced, as compared to wild-type mice, indicating that NT-3 can modulate the number of MCs directly via TrkC, although TrkC does not seem to be essential for the number of basal MCs. To further analyze the effects of NT-3 on MCs, we stimulated skin organ culture of early postnatal C57BL/6 mouse skin with 5-50 ng/ml NT-3, which induced a significant increase in MC degranulation, as visualized by Giemsa staining. However, stimulation of isolated neonatal dermal skin MCs with NT-3 in vitro failed to result in MC activation, as measured by serotonin release. Our data suggest a role for NT-3 in the maturation of MCs, such as a TrkC-mediated stimulation of the differentiation of pre-existing, less mature MCs and/or by enhancing the migration of circulating MC precursors into the skin.

No / The present invention relates to compositions and methods useful in studying or modulating melanin pigmentation in the skin. Particularly, the invention relates to compositions comprising a substance capable of modulating the activity or expression of ALK6 (SEQ ID 2) or Cdc42 which in turn are capable of modulation of the transfer of melanin from melanocytes to keratinocytes and potentially from keratinocytes to keratinocytes. The invention also relates to assays for identifying such compositions, and methods of modulating skin pigmentation.

No / Skin responds to environmental stressors via coordinated actions of the local neuroimmunoendocrine system. Although some of these responses involve opioid receptors, little is known about cutaneous proenkephalin expression, its environmental regulation, and alterations in pathology. The objective of this study was to assess regulated expression of proenkephalin in normal and pathological skin and in isolated melanocytes, keratinocytes, fibroblasts, and melanoma cells. The proenkephalin gene and protein were expressed in skin and cultured cells, with significant expression in fibroblasts and keratinocytes. Mass spectroscopy confirmed Leu- and Met-enkephalin in skin. UVR, Toll-like receptor (TLR)4, and TLR2 agonists stimulated proenkephalin gene expression in melanocytes and keratinocytes in a time- and dose-dependent manner. In situ Met/Leu-enkephalin peptides were expressed in differentiating keratinocytes of the epidermis in the outer root sheath of the hair follicle, in myoepithelial cells of the eccrine gland, and in the basement membrane/basal lamina separating epithelial and mesenchymal components. Met/Leu-enkephalin expression was altered in pathological skin, increasing in psoriasis and decreasing in melanocytic tumors. Not only does human skin express proenkephalin, but this expression is upregulated by stressful stimuli and can be altered by pathological conditions.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Medicine / Master / Master of Philosophy

Breast cancer is one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers affecting women in the United States. An ongoing objective of many research groups is to develop a biomechanical breast model for different applications, ranging from surgical outcome predictions for patients undergoing breast reconstruction surgery, to image registration for planning plastic surgery. Achieving the goal of developing a physics based biomechanical model of the human breast requires the determination of material properties of the various tissues constituting the breast. The objective of this thesis is to develop an appropriate hybrid experimental-numerical technique to enable the calibration of material parameters of skin for different constitutive models (commonly used for skin). The quantification of the material parameters thus obtained validates the bulge test method to be used in testing soft tissue specimens like skin. A bulge test device was custom-built for this work; it consists of a pressure chamber, two digital cameras, and a syringe pump as its main components. The syringe pump provides a constant flow rate of water into the pressure chamber and results in the bulging of specimens with a diameter between 45 mm and 80 mm. Three-dimensional Digital Image Correlation technique is used to obtain full field displacement measurements of the three dimensional shape of the bulge. Tests were performed on commercial rubber sheets of different thickness and on porcine skin specimens; in these tests, the bulge shape was measured at monotonically increasing and decreasing pressure levels, as well as during cyclic loading allowing determination of the deformation and strain fields over the specimen surface. In order to extract the material properties, a hybrid experimental-numerical method was used: the experiment was modeled numerically using the finite element analysis software Abaqus, imposing the commonly used Mooney-Rivlin model for isotropic materials and the Gasser-Ogden-Holzapfel model for anisotropic materials. A comparison between the experimentally measured and numerically simulated bulge shapes was used to determine the optimized material parameters under biaxial loading conditions over a large range of stretch levels. / text