Abstract: The extraction and characterization modified of type I collagen from rabbit-skins are investigated in this paper. Collagen was extracted from rabbit-skins by the combination of acid solubilization and pepsin solubilization. A qualitative analysis was carried out by SDS-PAGE. Both FT-IR and TG/DTG were employed to characterize the physical and chemical properties of the collagen. The results show that the extracted collagen is referred as type I collagen with a complete three-helix structure. In the process of thermal treatment, three stages of weight loss are observed at the temperatures of below 100℃, between 200℃ and 450℃, and after 450℃, respectively. After being cross-linked by glutaraldehyde, the collagen was submitted to water content and enzyme degradation with I-collagenase in vitro. It is indicated that, after modification, the water content was (78.7±1.3)%. The degradation rate decreases from (88.65±0.11)% to (6.03±0.38)% (p＜0.01). Cytotoxicity of the modified collagen was evaluated by growth suppression technique (MTT chromatometry) against wild type mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEF-WT). Its result shows that the cytotoxicity of the collagen is of grade 1 or grade 0, nearly no cytotoxicity. This collagen has a potential use in tissue engineering.