UCSD Doctor Helps Develop Technique to ‘Grow’ Skin

A doctor at UC San Diego Medical Center’s Regional Burn Center has helped develop a human skin graft technique that could prompt a major change in the way burns are treated.

The technique, described in today’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn., might one day allow burn victims to “grow” new skin even if the outer layer has been destroyed, according to John F. Hansbrough, associate professor of surgery at the medical center and principal author of the JAMA article.

The technique combines cells from both the inner and outer layers of skin, the first time that cells from both have been used to grow skin for covering major burn wounds, according to the article.

Burn victims are now treated through “skin autografts,” which involves taking a partial layer of skin from an unburned area on the patient. While that patch of skin can be expanded in size by stretching and cutting, severely burned patients with only small areas of healthy skin are often subjected to repeated, and painful, operations involving the same skin areas.

Hansbrough’s new technique, which is years away from widespread use, “offers the potential for creating large quantities of replacement skin from a single harvesting of the patient’s skin cells,” according to a medical center spokeswoman.

The technique could reduce hospitalization time and improve the quality of skin grafts, according to the JAMA article, which describes the successful use of the technique on four patients between August and December, 1988.

“In future studies, we plan to graft larger wounds and use appropriate antimicrobial agents to decrease graft loss due to infection,” said Hansbrough, director of UCSD’s burn center.

The new technique might one day allow skin grafts to attach to the body in a matter of days. Existing grafting techniques often take weeks or months.

In the four cases described in the JAMA article, the grafts achieved “a take” within nine days. The bond between the layers of skin was much closer than that achieved through other skin replacement techniques, according to the article.

Steven Boyce, a medical doctor at the Shriners Burn Institute in Cincinnati, is co-author of the article.