The Alfred Hospital hosts one of a handful of labs around Australia working on engineered skin, a promising therapy that uses lab-grown cells suspended in sheets that can be grafted onto deep burns.
Every batch of engineered skin made at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne starts with a small piece of healthy skin from a patient.
When trial participants arrive, the researchers will take a small sample of their healthy, unburnt skin and use it to grow billions of new skin cells in the lab's incubators. And they continue a long history of Australian burns research and technology that's now used on operating tables the world over.How well a burn heals depends on a range of things, such as a person's health, their age , and the size and depth of their burn:
While small or superficial burns usually heal within a few weeks, it's not the case with large, deep burns. They heal incredibly slowly, if at all. This means people with extensive burns are also at huge risk of infection. So researchers are working on ways to reduce or eliminate the need for autografts by making many skin cells from very few.It works like this: A small piece of skin, taken from a patient on the operating table, is placed in an enzyme cocktail that breaks the skin into its cells, a bit like how a brick wall can be deconstructed into individual bricks.
She says the platelet-rich hydrogel not only holds the skin cells in place, but "has inherent antibacterial properties and also promotes vascularisation". Ideally, surgeons want large sheets of engineered skin, Dr Dearman says: "If you have small pieces, it may leave a patchwork quilt-like appearance and is more time-consuming for application."Years later, the man is living independently."Our ultimate goal is to reduce the use of skin autografts," she says.Being able to quickly and cheaply generate bespoke skin grafts not only has implications for burns, but other types of chronic wound too, such as diabetic foot ulcers.
Skin Graft Burns Full Thickness Burns Alfred Hospital Concord Hospital Royal Adelaide Hospital Medicine Surgery Wound Healing Wounds Stem Cells Cell Therapy Engineered Skin Bioengineering
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