Columbia Researchers Are Creating Seamless 3D Skin Grafts For Burn Patients. In the past, in order to cover a severe burn or injury on a patient, doctors would take skin from one part of the patient’s body, scrape it off, and then slap it back on another portion of the patient’s body. Today, however, the science of skin grafting has advanced significantly.
Columbia Researchers Are Creating Seamless 3D Skin Grafts For Burn Patients
These days, it’s normal practise to use the patient’s own cultured cells to bioprint grafts, which simulates the process of a living inkjet and seeds the developing process with the patient’s own cells all the way down to the vascularization.
The fact that these printed grafts can only be generated in the form of flat sheets with open borders is the most significant limitation associated with them. This strategy “disregard[s] the totally contained geometry of human skin,” assert a team of researchers from Columbia University.
Instead, they have invented a revolutionary method of generating skin in practically any complex three-dimensional shape that they require, from ears and elbows to full hands printed like a pair of Buffalo Bill’s gloves. This allows them to produce skin in virtually any shape that they require.
In the January issue of Scientific Advances, the group of researchers presented their findings under the title “Engineering edgeless human skin with better biomechanical properties.” They explained how they created “the skin as a fully contained 3D tissue that can be fashioned after a body component and seamlessly transplanted as a biological clothing.” The skin can be shaped after a body part and can be seamlessly implanted as biological clothing.
According to Dr. Hasan Erbil Abaci, the principal researcher on this project and an assistant professor of dermatology at Columbia University, who was quoted in a recent news release, “three-dimensional skin structures that may be transplanted as ‘biological clothing’ would have several advantages.” “They would drastically lower the need for suturing, reduce the length of surgeries, and improve aesthetic outcomes.”
In addition to this, the performance of these uniform grafts has been demonstrated to be superior, both mechanically and functionally, to the performance of its patchwork equivalents. The grafts have been given the moniker of “wearable edgeless skin structures” by the Columbia team (WESCs). Okay, but can you actually consume them?
3D Laser Used For Skin Prosthesis
The procedure of generating these skin prosthesis is not that unlike to the techniques that already exist, which end up producing flat slabs of skin as a product. A 3D laser is first used to scan the area that will receive the transplant in order to produce a digital facsimile of the structure. After running the data through a computer-aided design (CAD) application, a hollow wireframe of the appendige is generated and then printed.
This will act as the scaffolding onto which the patient’s cultured cells will grow as they are grown in culture. It is subsequently covered with an exterior layer of keratinocytes (which make up the epidermis) and growth medium to feed the cells as they mature. Finally, it is coated with skin fibroblasts and collagen. In the same manner as the production of flat sheets, it takes around three weeks for the cells to completely establish themselves and become suitable for transplantation.
Positive results were found in preliminary lab experiments using mouse models. Abaci described the situation as “as if a pair of shorts were put on the mice.” The entire procedure took roughly ten minutes to complete. Don’t get too enthusiastic, mouse skin is not people skin. Because of the distinctive way in which it mends, additional research on animals is necessary before we can begin testing it on people. Such examinations are probably still several years away.
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