It is a great challenge for surgeons to graft skin on a part of the body that has lost it. Like sheets of paper, artificial fur comes in flat pieces, so it can be difficult and time consuming to sew around an irregularly shaped body part.
Bioengineers seem to have found a solution to this problem, devising a way to grow artificial skin with complex three-dimensional shapes, making it possible to build, for example, a seamless “glove” made of skin cells that can be easily placed on one hand. severely burned, to which it will become entrenched over time.
Three-dimensional skin structures that can be transplanted as “biological clothing” will have many advantages, emphasizes Hasan Erbil Abaci of Columbia University in the US city of New York, and a member of the research and development team that has created the eye-catching gloves. 3D biologic structures like this would drastically minimize the need for sutures, reduce the duration of surgical operations, and improve cosmetic results.
The new study also revealed that grafts made from a single piece and already in 3D have better mechanical and functional properties than conventional grafts made from different pieces joined together.
The process of creating new skin grafts begins with a 3D laser scan of the target structure, such as a human hand. A hollow, permeable model of the hand is then created using computer-aided design and 3D printing. The exterior of the model is seeded with skin fibroblasts, which generate the connective tissue of the skin, and collagen (a structural protein). Finally, the exterior of the mold is coated with a mixture of keratinocytes (cells that make up most of the outer layer of the skin, or epidermis) and the interior is “watered” with growth media, which supports and nourishes the graft. Developing.
With the exception of the 3D scaffold, the researchers used the same procedures used to make flat skin, and the entire process took the same time, about three weeks.
A moment in the process of creating a transplant glove made from human skin cells. (Photo: Alberto Pappalardo / Hasan Erbil Abaci / Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. CC BY-NC-ND)
In a first trial of 3D-engineered skin, structures composed of human skin cells were successfully grafted onto the hind limbs of mice. “It was like putting shorts on the mice,” Abaci says. “The entire operation took only about 10 minutes.” Four weeks later, the grafts had fully integrated with the surrounding mouse skin, and the mice recovered all previously impaired limb functions.
Abaci and his colleagues report the technical details of their achievement in the academic journal Science Advances, under the title “Engineering Edgeless Human Skin with Enhanced Biomechanical Properties.” (Font: NCYT de Amazings)