Culturing skin in vitro for wound therapy.
Current tissue-culture techniques enable keratinocytes from a small piece of skin to be grown into sheets of epithelium, or cultured keratinocyte grafts, that are suitable for treating wounds. Serial subculture enables rapid expansion of a cell population, such that grafts of a total area equivalent to that of the surface of an adult can be obtained from an initial skin biopsy of approximately 2 cm2 in under one month. In this article, the methods currently used for culturing keratinocytes, the search for a fully functional replacement for the dermal elements of skin, and the prospects for clinical development of these technologies in the near future are discussed.
Navsaria
H A
HA
Dept of Experimental Dermatology, London Hospital Medical School, UK.
Myers
S R
SR
Leigh
I M
IM
McKay
I A
IA
D002454:Cell Differentiation; D017690:Cell Transplantation; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D003470:Culture Media; D005347:Fibroblasts / Q000166:cytology; D006801:Humans; D015603:Keratinocytes / Q000166:cytology* / Q000637:transplantation; D012867:Skin / Q000166:cytology* / Q000293:injuries; D016038:Skin Transplantation; D014182:Transplantation, Autologous / Q000379:methods; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous / Q000379:methods; D014945:Wound Healing
D003470:Culture Media