In Vitro Study of Vitiligo

The study of vitiligo has been approached by several different perspectives. Accordingly to the progressive improvement of the technological support to the research and discovery of new fields in the biological world, even researchers who focused on vitiligo gained new opportunities. An unsolved question regards how and where to analyze the possible pathomechanisms underlying the vitiligo onset and progression. A clear-cut position against the best in vitro approach is aleatory. It is surely customary to use the primary cell cultures to perform functional studies; however, the in vitro assays with primary cell cultures are indissolubly affected by the intrinsic selection of the more “aggressive” or best cells among the overall tissue bulk. Moreover, the media usually used to select and grow the primary cells are optimized to burst their proliferative or differentiative ability, probably overcoming the intrinsic features of the isolated cells. The first requirement of a researcher is to maximize yield of a bioptic sample, but this requirement affects per se the quality of the resulting cultures that may no longer reflect the initial cellular asset of an individual. This initial reflection did not intend to attack the studies currently performed with primary cell cultures, but it just aims to alert about the possible intrinsic bias.