Bespoke skin

A dissolvable scaffold for growing new areas of skin could provide a safer, more effective way of treating burns, diabetic ulcers and similar injuries.

The ultra-fine, three-dimensional scaffold, which is made from specially developed polymers, looks similar to tissue paper but has fibres 100 times finer.

Before it is placed over a wound, the patient’s skin cells (obtained via a biopsy) are introduced and attach themselves to the scaffold, multiplying until they eventually grow over it. When placed over the wound, the scaffold dissolves harmlessly over six-to-eight weeks, leaving the patient’s skin cells behind.

The new approach to skin reconstruction has been developed by a team of chemists, materials scientists and tissue engineers at Sheffield University, with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

It is designed primarily for cases involving extensive burns where surgeons are unable to take enough skin grafts from elsewhere on the body to cover the damaged areas. Currently, bovine collagen or skin from human donors is used in these cases, but these approaches have potential health and rejection risks.