Most of us don’t think much about our skin until something goes wrong. But if you suffer a serious burn or deep wound, the skin’s role as the body’s shield becomes clear.
Without healthy skin, the body loses protection against infections, dehydration, and other dangers. For people with major injuries, restoring this barrier can be a matter of life and death.
Right now, large burns are often treated by transplanting the top layer of skin, called the epidermis. This layer is only one type of cell and doesn’t include the deeper, more complex layer underneath called the dermis.
The dermis is much thicker and contains blood vessels, nerves, hair follicles, and other structures that keep skin strong and flexible. Without it, transplanted skin often heals with severe scarring. Unfortunately, transplanting both the epidermis and dermis from a donor site leaves another wound just as large, making it impractical.
Researchers at the Swedish Center for Disaster Medicine and Traumatology and Linköping University wanted to find another way. Their goal was to help the body rebuild the dermis naturally, without causing more damage elsewhere. The idea is to give the body the “building blocks” it needs and let it do the rest.
The most common cells in the dermis are called fibroblasts. These connective tissue cells are easy to take from the body and can be grown in a lab. They can also change into more specialized cells depending on the body’s needs.
In the lab, the researchers grew these cells on tiny, sponge-like beads made of gelatin, a material similar to the collagen found in real skin. But there was a problem: if they simply poured the bead mixture onto a wound, it wouldn’t stay in place.
The solution was to mix the beads with a gel made from hyaluronic acid, a substance already found in the human body. Using a process called click chemistry, the beads and gel were linked together, creating a new material that could be squeezed through a syringe and then solidify on the wound.
The team calls this “skin in a syringe.” This gel also has a special property: it becomes liquid under light pressure, meaning it can be injected or even 3D printed with living cells inside. Once applied, it turns gel-like again.
In the study, the scientists 3D-printed small skin-like pieces and placed them under the skin of mice. The results were promising. The cells survived, produced substances needed to form new dermis, and even developed blood vessels to keep the tissue alive.
This suggests that in the future, doctors could take a small skin sample from a patient, grow their cells, and print a custom skin graft ready to heal burns or deep wounds.
Blood vessels are important not only for skin but for many other engineered tissues. Without them, cells in lab-grown structures die from lack of oxygen and nutrients.
The team also published another study showing how they can make soft, water-rich threads called hydrogels. These threads can be tied, shaped into tiny tubes, and used to grow blood vessel cells or move fluids—offering hope for building working blood vessels in artificial organs.
This research could transform burn treatment and tissue engineering. While it has only been tested in mice so far, the idea of “printing” living skin from a patient’s own cells could reduce scarring, speed up healing, and open new possibilities for medical care.
It could also help solve one of the biggest challenges in bioengineering: supplying blood to lab-grown tissues.
The study was supported by the Erling-Persson Foundation, the European Research Council, the Swedish Research Council, and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
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The study is published in Advanced Healthcare Materials.
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