They say that some wounds never heal, and if they do, the scars are there. No, we’re not talking about deep-seated emotional wounds. We’re referring to superficial ones.
Burn victims can relate to this dilemma. While the pain is no longer there and the skin has somewhat turned into a scar, the signs of past trauma will never disappear. It’s right there, on the skin, reminding them of what had happened to them in the past.
Researchers and scientists have searched for ways to help burn victims truly move on. They have invented a revolutionary new machine that may be able to grow new skin. When approved, hundreds of thousands of people could actually benefit from this.
A piece of skin that’s merely the size of a nickel can create and grow skin graft that’s the size of a manhole cover when placed inside a revolutionary Swiss bioengineering machine designed to aid burn victims everywhere.
The latest machine makes skin that’s neither totally real nor totally artificial. This new device is about the size of a coffee table. When a small sized skin is placed, it allows it to be stretched for it to grow to a greater size. This was made with the millions of people who suffer debilitating injury or death from burns in mind.
So, how exactly does the machine work? It starts by taking healthy and undamaged cutaneous skin cells from the victim itself. The procedure starts by “growing” them in a lab before they are combined with hydrogel. What happens after is a 1mm inch thick skin that is the combined width of the body’s natural skin layers.
The technology behind this so-called skin harvest and growth is called denovoGraft. In fact, this has already been used to treat people despite the fact that the machine is only in the finishing leg in the phase II trials. That’s because for a chosen number of patients, this method of skin crafting is extremely advanced, it’s the only existing option they have at this point. That’s because many of the people who have undergone denovoGraft either suffer from a rare illness or have a significant burn.
Daniela Marino, co-founder and director of denovoGraft’s developers CUTISS, explained, “At the moment we can multiply the surface area of the original sample by a factor of 100, and we’re aiming eventually for a factor of 500.”
A Swiss news outlet reports that 11 million people worldwide suffer serious burns every year, and a more democratized treatment option could launch the field forward to a point where those in developing countries and war zones would be able to receive a denovoSkin graft. The denovoGraft machine can make several grafts at a time with no manual input, which offers the chance to dramatically reduce both production time and costs.
The skin reconstruction market in the event of scars or burning is valued at just merely less than $2 billion and there are only around 40 people employed full-time in the sector of the market. In fact, Marino told Swiss Info, “There are 20 centers of excellence in Europe for treating serious burns. We’re going to start by working with them, and we can do that on our own. Later, sure, we’ll have to find partners.”
Marino says that they expect to get into the phase III trials and this is to be finished sometime after 2023. Soon after, the procedure would be available principally and initially in Europe.
Recommended For You
