Acute changes in nidogen-1 expression in the epidermal basement membrane of a 3-dimensional cultured human skin model after ultraviolet B irradiation.

Ultraviolet B (UVB) light can cause various effects on human skin, such as sunburn or immunosuppression as an acute reaction and skin cancer induction as a chronic reaction. Chronic UVB irradiation damages the epidermis, basement membrane (BM) and the upper dermal tissue [1]. The epidermal BM is comprised of specialized sheet-like extracellular matrices, located at the dermal-epidermal junction (DEJ) and plays an important role in maintaining the structure of healthy epidermis and dermis [2].