Aesthetics and health: the breakthrough of 3D skin transplants. Here’s what it is and what it uses
The skin transplant market is an explosive economic sector, due to its expansive capacity, impacting the healthcare sector but also in the aesthetic sector. To date, a single transplant, even minimal, of a piece of skin, on average it costs no less than 10,000 euros. A sector that experts say is worth billions of dollars. This is especially done by those who have had burns and accidents but medical applications have gone beyond the reconstructive field, opening up to widespread aesthetics. It affects reconstructive surgery of the body, face and even human hair treatments. Over 11 million burn injuries occur worldwide every year, 180,000 of which are fatal. To date, bioengineered leather could and can be produced manually, but with a long and very expensive process.
According to the report published by Zion Market Research, even just the size of the global market of scalpel used for skin grafting is valued at $1,169.78 million in 2023 and is expected to reach $2,612.86 million by the end of 2032. But in recent days researchers at Pennsylvania State University have printed, 3D, living human skin tissue. They would be the first in the world to be there successful, with possible uses in every human sphere, they explained, publishing the research work in the specialized magazine Bioactive. The application was used on open wounds of rats and had no rejection.
Skin grafts, even if they move an enormous and delicate economic market, present significant problems in terms of the perfect reproduction of human tissue.
“Reconstructive surgery to correct trauma to the face or head due to injury or disease is usually imperfect, resulting in scarring or permanent hair loss,” said Ibrahim Ozbolat, professor of engineering at Pennsylvania State University, lead author of published research.
The technique used by the Americans is based on a conceptual innovation. The group of researchers would have perfectly repaired the damaged tissue thanks to a new approach that involves printing respectively the lower and intermediate layers of the skin, the hypodermis and the middle dermis, allowing the upper layer, what is called the epidermis, to reform itself with the passage of time, that is, without human intervention. Over the course of two weeks, the epidermis reformed over the 3D printed layers of hypodermis and dermis. The rats even grew hair back, sprouting from their skin. “This is a step closer to being able to achieve a more natural and aesthetically pleasing head and face reconstruction in humans“Ozbolat explained to the magazine.
Scientists have produced a kind of bioink, composed of three components: a network of proteins and stem cells, both extracted from the tissue human adipose collected from operated patients and finally a coagulant solution that helps hold everything together on the damaged layer, in this case of the rat, on which the skin was directly printed in 3D.
Last month the team obtained a patent for their technique from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The system was renamed bioprinting. Now we need to think about interventions on the human body that can truly revolutionize the sector of aesthetic reconstruction and reconstructive surgery for skin trauma.