When the depth of burns and scalds spread to epidermis and more than two thirds of dermis are damaged, it belongs to thick depth, and the wound can't heal itself, so skin grafting is needed. Moreover, the burned area of patients will also affect the healthy skin donor site for transplantation, which reflects the shortage of tissue substitutes such as artificial skin at present.

The key to recovering skin trauma

The key to skin wound recovery is basal keratinocytes, which are precursors of different types of skin cells. However, when the wound is so severe that there are no basal keratinocytes at the wound, even if the wound heals, the main purpose of the new cells is to close the wound and resist inflammation, rather than to rebuild healthy skin.

When the skin has a large burn wound, it is usually necessary to transplant complete skin from other parts of the patient's body to cover the wound. When the ulcer area is particularly large, it is difficult for doctors to find enough skin for transplantation. They need to isolate skin stem cells from patients, cultivate them in the laboratory, and then transplant them back into patients. However, such treatment takes a lot of time, which may put patients' lives in danger and sometimes be ineffective.

Technology of transforming mesenchymal cells into new skin

Salk Institute for Biological Studies has developed a new technology, which can directly transform mesenchymal cells in open wounds into new skin cells, thus curing skin injuries. This technique is different from the previous method of culturing skin stem cells in vitro, and its research results are published in the top international journal Nature.

The new method used by the research team is to transform mesenchymal cells in wounds into basal keratinocytes by biotechnology, and select four factors that can mediate the transformation into basal keratinocytes from 55 "reprogramming factors"-protein and RNA molecules, which may be involved in defining the characteristics of basal keratinocytes, as the basis of skin reconstruction. This new technology may make the treatment of large skin ulcers no longer rely on complicated plastic surgery.

Experiments in mice show that when these four factors are used for local treatment of skin ulcers in mice, healthy skin, namely epithelial cells, will grow in the ulcer area within 18 days. After a period of time, these cells will gradually expand in a large area of skin damage and connect with the surrounding skin. Molecular, genetic and cell tests also prove that these new skins are no different from healthy skins in other parts of the body.

The researchers said that this achievement not only helps to treat skin damage, but also helps to study how to fight skin aging and skin cancer. However, if this technology is used in clinic, more research is needed on its long-term safety.

Paper Archives: Nature is one of the earliest scientific journals in the world, and also one of the most authoritative and prestigious academic journals in the world. Originally published in 1869 1 1.4. Although most scientific journals today are devoted to a special field, Nature is one of the few journals that still publish many first-hand research papers in scientific fields.

Reference article: in vivo reprogramming of wound-resident cells produces skin epidemiological tissue