Author Archives: Sunny Jeong

The FUTURE is here! Skin-cell Gun

skin-cell-gunThe skin is our body’s first protective barrier from germs and viruses. Every year, thousands of victims from major effects of skin burns survive but some die while waiting for the skin to fully recover.In the past, burns have been treated with skin grafts which take skin sections from uninjured parts of the patient’s body, or grow sheets of skin artificially, and graft them over the burn. During the recovery period, the exposed flesh gives a greater chance for harmful pathogens to invade the human body.

Professor Jorg C. Gerlach and colleagues of the Department of Surgery at the University of Pittsburg’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine have been working on a way to minimize the healing time for burn victims, so that the chance of infection is reduced. The concept was first introduced shown in 2008. The good news is that they devised a tool to cut recovery time drastically and save lives. This method is called the Skin-Cell Gun.

The Skin-cell Gun is more like an airbrush gun that holds healthy stem cells that were isolated from a burn victim’s healthy part of skin. Using the device, these healthy stem cells are sprayed onto the burned area of a patient’s body. The surprising thing is the next part which is the recovery time. Instead of a burn wound in the past that normally takes weeks or months to heal, the same wound can be cured a lot faster. Dr Gerlach said the device takes only an hour and a half in total.

At the moment the technique can only be used on second-degree burns, but Dr Gerlach hopes it will later be able to tackle third-degree burns as well.

This video contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing. This clip will also air on National Geographic‘s Explorer: How to Build a Beating Heart. The skin cell gun is a wonderful work!
References:
Spray-on Skin Is a Reality:
“Skin cell gun” regenerates cells in days