Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine is an interdisciplinary field that applies principles of engineering and life sciences toward developing biological substitutes that restore, maintain, or improve tissue function. The primary goal is to develop methods and materials that encourage the regeneration of native tissues and organs. One of the major focuses of tissue engineering has been on developing alternatives to skin grafts for the treatment of severe burns.
Challenges of Skin Grafting and the Need for Alternative Treatments
Bioengineered Artificial Skin grafts have been the standard treatment for extensive burns for over a century. However, skin grafts have some significant limitations. Autologous skin grafts, which use skin from another part of the patient's body, can only provide a limited amount of donor skin. For major burns covering over 50% of the total body surface area, there is often not enough healthy skin available for grafting. Allografts that use cadaver skin can serve as temporary wound coverings but carry risks of disease transmission and immune rejection. What's needed are permanent skin substitutes that can be readily produced, easily stored and transported, and encourage natural tissue regeneration with less risk of scarring or contractures. This has prompted extensive research into developing bioengineered skin replacements.
Designing and Fabricating Bioengineered Artificial Skin Substitutes
Bioengineered skin substitutes are designed to mimic the structure and function of native skin as closely as possible. Researchers take skin cells like fibroblasts and keratinocytes and grow them in culture on various natural or synthetic scaffolds that support new tissue growth. The scaffolds provide a temporary extracellular matrix to guide cellular organization and tissue development. Some of the biomaterials used include collagen, fibrin, chitosan, and hyaluronic acid based biomaterials. The cultured skin cells are seeded onto the scaffolds and conditioned in culture to proliferate and differentiate. After a period of incubation, fully populated skin grafts are created that resemble native dermis and epidermis layers when implanted.
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