Artificial skin

The treatment of patients who have lost extensive skin tissue-for example,burn patients or those with skin ulcers-is one of the most difficult problems in therapeutic medicine. Today,laboratory-grown skin can be employed to replace grafts in such patients. Ideally, the 'artificial' tissue would be grown from cells taken from the patient. When this is not possible,for example, with burn victims, the tissue cells come from another source. When the graft skin is not formed from the patient's own cells, drugs that suppress the body's natural immune defence system must be used, or steps must be taken to modify the new cell line to prevent rejection of the tissue.
The challenge in growing artificial tissue is to get the cells to organize themselves as they would in a living system. The first step in accomplishing this objective is to provide a suitable scaffold for the cells to grow on, one that will keep them in contact with each other and allow them to organize. Such a scaffold must be biocompatible; cells must adhere to the scaffold and differentiate (that is, develop into cells of different types) as the culture grows. The scaffolding must be mechanically strong and biodegradable.