The EpiDerm™ Skin Corrosion Test (EpiDerm™ SCT)

Abstract

Assessment of the skin corrosion potential is an important consideration in establishing procedures for the safe handling, packing and transport of chemicals. Testing for skin corrosion in vivo causes suffering and pain to the test animals. A number of alternative approaches for the assessment of skin corrosion have been developed in the past three decades and some of the assays gained regulatory acceptance as replacements of the rabbit skin corrosion test. This chapter describes in details the skin corrosion test (SCT) based on the use of in vitro reconstructed human epidermis model EpiDerm™ (EpiDerm™ SCT). The EpiDerm™ SIT is a validated and regulatory adopted test method under the OECD Test Guidelines as TG 431 along with three other tissue models. The chapter focuses on the technical details of this assay, provides information about the performance of the test method during the validation study and discusses the adapted protocol derived from an OECD follow up work to improve the prediction model of RhE models for the sub-categorization of corrosive sub-classes.