Cultivated skin, also known as lab-grown skin, is skin tissue developed outside the human body in a controlled laboratory setting. This innovative approach involves growing skin cells to form functional tissue layers. It offers new possibilities for medical treatments and research, providing an alternative to natural skin.
Creating Cultivated Skin
The process begins with a small biopsy of a patient’s own skin. This sample contains keratinocytes, the main cells of the epidermis, and fibroblasts from the dermis. These cells are isolated and placed into a specialized culture medium for proliferation.
Cells multiply rapidly in incubators, which maintain precise temperature and carbon dioxide levels, mimicking the body’s environment. As these cells grow, they are seeded onto a scaffold or matrix. This support guides them to organize into the layered structure of natural skin, forming sheets of epithelium that can be expanded significantly from the initial sample.
Medical Applications
Cultivated skin is used in treating severe burns, providing a solution for patients with extensive skin damage where donor sites are limited. Cultured epithelial autografts (CEA), derived from the patient’s own cells, can be used as cell layers or sprayed directly onto wounds. This allows for coverage of large burn areas from a very small skin biopsy.
Beyond burns, this lab-grown tissue is applied in managing chronic wounds, such as diabetic ulcers, which often struggle to heal. Applying cultivated skin can accelerate closure and improve outcomes for these persistent lesions. It also serves as a model for drug testing and assessing the safety of cosmetic products. This laboratory-based testing reduces the need for animal experimentation, providing an ethical and efficient alternative for evaluating new substances.
Characteristics and Current Scope
While cultivated skin offers benefits, it currently mimics only certain aspects of natural skin’s complexity. It forms a protective barrier, similar to the epidermis, which helps prevent fluid loss and infection. However, these lab-grown tissues lack the intricate structures found in natural skin, such as hair follicles, sweat glands, and nerve endings.
The absence of these specialized appendages means cultivated skin does not fully replicate functions like thermoregulation through sweating or sensory perception. For deep wounds, a collagen-based dermal substitute is used underneath the cultivated skin to provide a more complete skin replacement. The current scope of cultivated skin primarily focuses on providing a protective covering and facilitating wound healing, with ongoing research aiming to incorporate more complex natural skin features.