3D-Printed Skin Transplants Show Promise in Wound Healing

Researchers have created what could be called “skin in a syringe.” This gel containing live cells can be 3D printed into a skin transplant, as shown in a study conducted on mice. This technology may led to new ways to treat burns and severe wounds. The study was led from the Center for Disaster Medicine and Traumatology and Linköping University in Sweden, and has been published in Advanced Healthcare materials.

As long as we have healthy skin, we don’t give it much thought. However, if we get major wounds or other injuries, it becomes clear that the skin is the body’s protection from the outside world. Helping the body restore the skin barrier after a serious burn can therefore be a matter of life and death.

Large burns are often treated by transplanting a thin layer of the top part of the skin,the epidermis. This is basically composed of a single cell type. Transplanting only this part of the skin leads to severe scarring.

Under the epidermis there is a thicker and more advanced layer of skin called the dermis. it has blood vessels, nerves, hair follicles and other structures necessary for skin function and elasticity. Though, transplanting also the dermis is rarely an option, as the procedure leaves a wound as large as the wound to be healed.

the trick is to create new skin that does not become scar tissue but a functioning dermis.

“The dermis is so intricate that we can’t grow it in a lab. We don’t even know what all its components are. That’s why we, and manny others, think that we could possibly transplant the building blocks and then let the body make the dermis itself,” says Johan Junker, researcher at the Swedish Center for Disaster Medicine and Traumatology and docent in plastic surgery at Linköping university.