Researchers from the University of Toronto have engineered an artificial skin, which can be used as a replacement skin for burn victims and sufferers of skin-related conditions. The engineered skin is being produced by mixing biomaterials. The study has been published in the journal Advanced Materials.
The skin can be grown into specific shapes, such as letters or numbers. Researchers have grown sheets of skin by planting individual cells into mosaic hydrogel sheet, which is compatible to cell growth in living tissues. For the process of growing lab-skin, the sheets are kept under similar conditions in which cells grow.
Researchers said that the placement of cells is so accurate that researchers can easily make out natural cell placement in living tissues and mimic it for lab-grown skin.
The lead author of the research, Lian Leng, said that the precision of cells’ natural placement makes it easier for researchers to put the cells in the right place to create quite natural cellular organisation.