Artificial Skin - Progress

Progress

Research is continually being done on artificial skin. Typically, a collagen scaffold is used (the protein that underlies the structure of skin), which can be additionally seeded with patient's own cells, or with foreskin from newborns that has been removed during circumcision.The edges of the scaffold meet with the healthy skin, allowing the new skin to heal quicker. Artificial skin can be used to save patients who have lost more than 50% of their own skin to burns, skin disorders, or certain forms of cancer. Additional technologies, such as an autologous spray-on skin produced by Avita Medical, are being tested in efforts to accelerate healing and minimize scarring.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology is working towards a fully automated process for producing artificial skin. Their goal is a simple two-layer skin without blood vessels that can be used to study how skin interacts with consumer products, such as creams and medicines. They hope to eventually produce more complex skin that can be used in transplants.

Hanna Wendt, and a team of her colleagues in the Department of Plastic, Hand and Reconstructive Surgery at Medical School Hannover Germany, have found a method for creating artificial skin using spider silk. Before this, however, artificial skin was grown using materials like collagen. These materials did not seem strong enough. Instead, Wendt and her team turned to spider silk, which is known to be 5 times stronger than Kevlar. The silk is harvested by “milking” the silk glands of golden orb web spiders. The silk was spooled as it was harvested, and then it was woven into a rectangular steel frame. The steel frame was 0.7 mm thick and the resulting weave was easy-to-handle, as well as easy to sterilize. Human skin cells were added to the meshwork silk and were found to flourish under an environment providing nutrients, warmth and air. However at this time, using spider silk to grow artificial skin in mass quantities is not practical because of the tedious process of harvesting spider silk.

Australian researchers are currently searching for a new, innovative way to produce artificial skin. This would produce artificial skin quicker, and in a more efficient way. The skin produced would only be 1 millimeter thick and would only be used to rebuild the epidermis. They can also make the skin 1.5 millimeters thick, which would allow the dermis to repair itself if needed. This would require bone marrow from a donation or from the patient's body. The bone marrow would be used as a “seed," and would be placed in the grafts to mimic the dermis. This has been tested on animals and has been proven to work with animal skin. Professor Maitz said, “In Australia, someone with a full-thickness burn to up to 80 per cent of their body surface area has every prospect of surviving the injury…However their quality of life remains questionable as we're unable, at present, to replace the burned skin with normal skin…We're committed to ensuring the pain of survival is worth it, by developing a living skin equivalent.”