Grow Your Skin Back, Ch-ch-ch-chia!
Wouldn’t it be great if we could regrow skin as fast as a Chia Pet? If you’ve ever had a serious wound you know that the only way to replace the skin you’ve lost is to take it from another part of your body. Most of the time grafts are taken from the thigh and the result is scaring on both the treated area and the portion of the leg it was taken from.
But why use your own skin when you can just grow it in the lab? That’s what the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology asked.
How is it done? Dr. Andreas Emmendörffer, the director of the project explains: “We pluck a few hairs off the back of the patient’s head and extract adult stem cells from their roots, which we then proliferate in a cell culture for about two weeks. Then we reduce the nutrient solution until it no longer covers the upper sides of the cells, exposing them to the surrounding air. The increased pressure exerted by the oxygen on the surfaces of the cells causes them to differentiate into skin cells.”
The resulting artificial skin grows into the wound. Within 72 days there are no signs of scarring or visible clues that the wound ever existed. That might even be faster than your Chia Homer’s hair grows.
The new technique is called EpiDex and it’s been approved for use in Germany. The team expects to preform the procedure on up to 20 patients every month in 2008.
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Connie T. said
am January 5 2008 @ 6:13 am
Wow, I could’ve used this several years ago! I once burned a significant amount of my hand badly, it left me out of work for one week, I almost needed a skin graft but luckily did not. However, it was a pain in the arse because I had to keep my hand covered all summer long after it healed because any exposure to the sun would’ve made it scar pretty badly, believe it or not.
And that was no big deal, relatively speaking. Perhaps this could benefit serious burn victims, and I wonder if there could even be an application toward skin cancer patients?
Jerad Kaliher said
am January 5 2008 @ 1:49 pm
@Connie T., it must have healed pretty well, I don’t remember seeing any scarring on it. But then again the only time I really looked was when it was inked up with henna.
Plans are to use it immediately for diabetics and people with serious ulcers. They didn’t mention anything about cancer patients but I’m sure that the applications must be very relevant for them.