Burns and chronic wounds require urgent, life-saving skin cover to improve the healing outcome and the patient’s future quality of life. We are working on a practical solution to develop a second-generation artificial skin biomaterial to provide this vital cover.

The challenge

When a burn or a chronic wound destroys the full thickness of the skin, the body can never regenerate this lost tissue. Traditionally, surgical intervention involves grafting skin from other parts of the body to treat the burn or wound. Yet in many cases, burns may be so extensive that there is not enough undamaged skin for surgeons to carry out conventional skin grafting. For some patients, conventional grafts involve a high risk by creating a new wound site elsewhere on the body that cannot heal completely. This is most problematic in elderly patients with pressure sores and people with diabetic or other chronic ulcers.

Tissue engineering

One approach offering real potential for success is to try to grow the patient's skin in a laboratory. Medical scientists can now use so-called 'tissue engineering' techniques to grow the top layer of skin, the epidermis, from a biopsy of skin just the size of a postage stamp. From this, they can grow enough epidermis in the laboratory to cover the entire body within a few weeks. However, it is far more challenging to use tissue engineering to grow the underlying layer of skin, the dermis, in the laboratory. Moreover, without the dermis, there is no way for optimum healing and repair to take place.

Our work

RAFT's Group Leader Dr Julian Dye is working with his team to develop an artificial skin material that will not only treat the wound in the short-term but also allow more extensive wounds to be treated than ever before.

Julian and his team's approach will maximise the body's innate healing potential. They have produced a prototype skin 'scaffold' that when placed on the wound, allows a functioning network of blood vessels to grow within it very rapidly, thus reconstructing the dermis.

This will address a major clinical disadvantage of previous types of skin scaffold, by increasing the chances of a graft "taking" before infection has a chance to set in and cause the material to fail. Moreover, it leads to the growth of the essential dermis layer; and may encourage healing without causing excessive scar tissue to form. Ultimately, this second-generation artificial dermis aims to support skin grafting to allow surgeons to reconstruct a more normal skin structure.

Next stages

The team is now performing rigorous testing in preparation for the next stage of development, setting up to manufacture under the standards required to perform a clinical trial. They are also working out how it might be best used to solve clinical challenges.

Charlotte's Challenge

Charlotte Stovell is competing in the first ever Eurostar Tri City Athlon on 14th September and raising funds for RAFT.

"At the age of 9 I was involved in a petrol boat fire at Chichester Harbour, West Sussex. Our family boat's petrol tank exploded on a hot summer's day and as I was standing not far from it, the force of the flames threw me onto the neighbouring pontoon and left me with 27° burns to the legs and arm.

It's thanks to the research of organisations such as R.A.F.T which has allowed my scars to look how they are today. I wanted to find a charity which doesn't necessarily receive as much media attention as it should and therefore doesn't perhaps receive as many donations as it deserves.

This is my chance to thank those who spend their days making breakthrough discoveries in the treatment of skin traumas."