Autologous Noncultured Melanocyte Transplantation for Stable Vitiligo: Can Suspending Autologous Melanocytes in the Patients' Own Serum Improve Repigmentation and Patient Satisfaction?

Abstract

Results of noncultured melanocyte transplantation can be improved significantly more by suspending the melanocytes in the patients' autologous serum than in normal saline. This could be an important innovation in the surgical management of patients with stable vitiligo.

Four compartment method as an efficacious and simplified technique for autologous non‐cultured epidermal cell suspension preparation in vitiligo surgery: A randomized, active‐controlled study

“…The overall reported efficacy of NB‐UVB phototherapy in attaining >75% repigmentation ranged from 12.5% to 75%, that too after a period of 1 year . The similar outcome can be achieved within 4 months by NCES as per the published clinical trials . Hence, NCES is an efficacious alternative to phototherapy in stable vitiligo.…”

“…They introduced PBS, a buffer solution commonly used in biological research, in place of melanocyte culture media and also used it to wash off excess trypsin thus circumventing the use of expensive trypsin inhibitor. Sahni et al . have demonstrated improvement of repigmentation outcome by suspending the melanocytes in the patients’ own serum.…”

“…Addition of hyaluronic acid to the cell suspension to increase viscosity and adherence to the recipient site was proposed by van Geel et al 8 Modifications addressing the cost reduction of the cell suspension preparation were proposed by Holla et al 9 They introduced PBS, a buffer solution commonly used in biological research, in place of melanocyte culture media and also used it to wash off excess trypsin thus circumventing the use of expensive trypsin inhibitor. Sahni et al 10 have demonstrated improvement of repigmentation outcome by suspending the melanocytes in the patients' own serum. Razmi et al 11 have shown that the addition of non-cultured hair follicular cell suspension into the NCES improves its repigmentation outcome, even in difficult-to-treat vitiligo.…”

Evidence-based management of vitiligo: summary of a Cochrane systematic review

“…Only one study reported QoL as the primary outcome measure . There was only one study where the investigators found a statistically significant result for this outcome, which showed a result in favour of a melanocyte suspension suspended in the patient's own serum, compared with suspension in normal saline ( P = 0·005). However, there were insufficient data to enable us to perform an analysis.…”

Review of current clinical studies of vitiligo treatments

“…Efforts were made to improve performance of noncultured cell transplantation. In one example, the use of autologous serum for melanocyte resuspension resulted in significantly better repigmentation supported by better improvement when judged based on Dermatology Quality of Life Index score . Khodadadi et al.…”