Advances in Skin Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

Abstract

There are an estimated 500,000 patients treated with full-thickness wounds in the United States every year. Fire-related burn injuries are among the most common and devastating types of wounds that require advanced clinical treatment. Autologous split-thickness skin grafting is the clinical gold standard for the treatment of large burn wounds. However, skin grafting has several limitations, particularly in large burn wounds, where there may be a limited area of non-wounded skin to use for grafting. Non-cellular dermal substitutes have been developed but have their own challenges; they are expensive to produce, may require immunosuppression depending on design and allogenic cell inclusion. There is a need for more advanced treatments for devastating burns and wounds. This manuscript provides a brief overview of some recent advances in wound care, including the use of advanced biomaterials, cell-based therapies for wound healing, biological skin substitutes, biological scaffolds, spray on skin and skin bioprinting. Finally, we provide insight into the future of wound care and technological areas that need to be addressed to support the development and incorporation of these technologies.

A novel method for the establishment of autologous skin cell suspensions: characterisation of cellular sub-populations, epidermal stem cell content and wound response-enhancing biological properties

“…Other approaches encompass isolation and expansion of cells (keratinocytes and fibroblasts), to significant quantities and subsequently they can be utilised in various procedures such as allogeneic cell therapy, whereby cells are preserved until required for direct application, or introduced to constructs such as scaffolds (Kirsner et al, 2012;Chen et al, 2023) However, use of allogeneic cells is limited due to immune rejection, and patients may require immunosuppressive drugs in concomitance to the treatment (Jorgensen et al, 2023).…”

Advances and applications of biomimetic biomaterials for endogenous skin regeneration

“…Therefore, the endogenous skin regeneration approaches are more suitable to be clinically applied. Several biomaterial artificial skins based on the principle of endogenous skin regeneration have been clinically tested and commercially produced now such as Biobrane® and Integra® [ 4 ]. However, clinically available biomaterial wound dressings and artificial skins have simplistic compositions and structures that make it difficult to achieve rapid scar-free healing and regeneration of the appendages [ 5 ].…”

The rise of mechanical metamaterials: Auxetic constructs for skin wound healing

“…In fact, besides immunoreactions, 25,26 there is another drawback to the use of human skin grafts that is the non-zero risk of disease transmission, as there has been at least one case of HIV transmission between donor and recipient. 27 To overcome these problems, tissue engineering research has been focusing on the development of scaffolds or tissue substitutes that act as templates for cell infiltration and subsequent regeneration of damaged skin, culminating in a plethora of skin substitutes, 3,28,29 some of them showing promising techniques and results, 30 and even reaching the market and clinic. 31 As an example, searching on PubMed for related keywords such as "skin tissue engineering," "skin substitutes," and "skin scaffolds" from the last few decades yields a substantial number of results, indicating an increasing growth in this area during that time period (as shown in Figure 1).…”