Recently, alternatives to animal testing have been used to evaluate skin sensitisers in cosmetic products. However, testing is still complicated and expensive. To develop a simpler, cost-effective and more accurate evaluation method for the skin sensitising chemicals, we employed cell-based and RT-PCR-based assay.

Representative sensitiser specific gene expression in THP-1 cells was analysed by microarray. Gene ontology (GO) analysis revealed that 26 genes induced by the sensitisers were associated with immune function.

First, seven of the 26 genes were chosen arbitrarily as candidate markers for our sensitisation assay. Then, THP-1 cells were exposed to 13 reference chemicals with known sensitising potential, and real-time RT-PCR assays targeting the candidate marker genes were performed. Among them, six markers were able to properly evaluate the sensitisation potential by classifying the gene induction rates with appropriate criteria. Especially, the results of the assay using TREM1 and TNFRSF12A gene markers showed 100% sensitivity and specificity.

An existing test method, h-CLAT, requires a flow cytometer and is complicated to operate. In contrast, our method is relatively simpler and more cost-effective. Therefore, our method is a promising one to evaluate sensitising chemicals.

最近，动物试验的替代方法已用于评估化妆品中的皮肤敏化剂。然而，测试仍然是复杂且昂贵的。为了开发一种对皮肤敏感化学物质更简单，更具成本效益的方法和更准确的评估方法，我们采用了基于细胞和基于RT-PCR的检测方法。

通过微阵列分析了THP-1细胞中代表性的敏化剂特异性基因表达。基因本体论（GO）分析显示，致敏剂诱导的26个基因与免疫功能有关。

首先，从26个基因中任意选择7个作为我们的敏化分析的候选标记。然后，将THP-1细胞暴露于具有已知致敏潜力的13种参比化学品中，并针对候选标记基因进行实时RT-PCR分析。其中，有六种标记物可以通过用适当的标准对基因诱导率进行分类，从而适当地评估致敏潜力。尤其是，使用TREM1和TNFRSF12A基因标记的分析结果显示出100％的敏感性和特异性。

现有的测试方法h-CLAT需要使用流式细胞仪，并且操作复杂。相反，我们的方法相对更简单且更具成本效益。因此，我们的方法是评估敏化化学品的一种有前途的方法。