Artificial Skin
Victoria Tang
Thomas Mak
Louise Tsang
Zero Wong
Iris Ting
Background
The functions of skin are of vital importance to human, and these can be achieved because of the unique structure of skin.
Structure of Skin
Importance of Skin
Regulating body
temperature
Providing protective
barrier
Reducing the
harmful effect of UV
radiation
Function of Skin
Acting as sensory
organ
Preventing loss of
moisture
Fig. 1 Basic Structure of Human Skin [1]
Fig. 2 Function of Human Skin [2]
Skin is a major organ of our body to sustain life. If damages of skin occur without any proper medical treatment, several serious problems
may arise.
Medical Problems
[3]

Skin can be damaged or lost by
1. Severe burns (By fire, heat, electric current, corrosive chemicals, etc.)
2. Mechanical skin trauma (Being cut by hard or keen objects, rubbing with rough surface, etc.)
3. Skin diseases (Skin cancer, skin putrefaction due to infection, etc.)
Therefore artificial skin is needed for transplantation.

Problems raised without the usage of artificial skin
Fig. 3 Artificial skin (left) compared to section through human skin (right).
1. Severe damage to large area of skin leading to dehydration, and
2. Infections,
3. Resulting in death

Problems raised by traditional skin graft
Traditional skin graft is adopted to replace skin of wounded area by using skin from other parts of
patients' body (such as thigh) or from a different person/cadaver. Problems raised are as follows:
1. Insufficient skin available for transplantation
2. Possibility of rejection due to immune response , or
3. Infection during the surgery
So artificial skin can provide essential skin functions and at the same time, have less problems raised
compared with the traditional skin graft’s method, which as a whole benefits patients suffering from
different degrees of skin loss. Different types of artificial skin are also designed to cater for patients’
needs.
Fig. 4 Skin with Capillary Wall
Solutions
The artificial skin aims to substitute traditional skin graft which has more flaws. There are three common types of artificial skins:
(1) Spray-on skin (2) Permanent skin graft (3) Temporary skin graft
Permanent Skin Graft
Spray-on Skin [7]
 Producing enough cells to cover major
burns in 5 days
 Procedures: [8]
1. Taking healthy skin sample from patient
2. Splitting the sample in laboratory to
separate out the surface cells
(keratinocytes)
3. Culturing cells for two to three weeks,
and making up into a suspension
4. Putting other skin cell tissue through a
meshing machine, meek mesher, and
then cutting the skin sample into tiny
squares
5. Spraying the cultured cells onto small
pieces of tissue and combining them to
create new skin for patient
 Developed from human cells [4]
 Procedures [5],[6]:
1. Extracting skin from other parts of body
(e.g. foreskin)
2. Separating skin cells (fibroblast) from
dermal layer
3. Quarantining the cells by testing for
viruses and other infectious pathogens
(e.g. HIV, hepatitis B and C)
4. Growing the cells on mesh scaffolding
5. Thawing, expanding and storing the
cells
6. Implanting it to patients’ wounds
7. Waiting until new blood vessels grow in
the implanted skin. (Approximately one
week’s time)
8. Recovering
Temporary Skin Graft [9]
 To protect the wounds while healing
 Able to be removed after recovery
 Procedures:
1. Taking cells from unwounded epidermal
layer
2. Culturing the cells as large sheets
3. Making skin graft from the cell sheets
4. Applying on wounds to stimulate the
growing of new dermis[10]
5. Waiting until the curing process
completes
6. Removing
the protective
upper layer
There are three types of artificial skin but no fixed formulae are set for different level of skin loss. In other
words, artificial skin is used, whether it is only a single type or a mixed of skin grafts, solely on a case-by-case
basis and depending on the health conditions of patients.
Fig. 6 The treatment helped heal severe burns on an
elderly patient's legs [11]
Fig. 5 human skin hair [12]
Fig. 7 Skin from a factory
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to Dr Barbara Chan and Dr Josephine Ip for their professional expertise, valuable opinions and above all,
patient guidance. Without their kind support, this project would not have been done smoothly.
Case Studies
For different sizes of wounds, different types of methods of healing will be used. For example, (i) When the size of the wound is
larger than a normal size of a palm, permanent skin graft will be used, if not, (ii) temporary skin graft will be used instead. For
the (iii) spray-on skin method, it is still being studied and thus not being practiced.
The following are 2 case studies using artificial skin:
Case 1 : The use of permanent skin graft on a patient with large amount of own skin being removed.
Case 2 : The use of the temporary skin graft on a patient with part of skin on leg being debrided (removal of dead, contaminated tissue) .
Cases
1
Patient
Male
5 years old
Solution used
Photos before the
surgery
Photos after the
surgery
Permanent skin graft
Suffering from
Necrotizing
fasciitis (a serious
infection that causes
cell tissue to be
rapidly destroyed) of
right upper limb
Fig. 10
Fig. 11,12 Permanent skin graft applied on the wound
Fig. 8,9 Permanent skin graft in culture
2
Male
62 years old
Temporary skin graft
Serial change
develop ulcer(a
sore area on the
outside of the body
or on the surface of
an organ inside the
body which is painful
and may bleed or
produce poisonous
substance) at
Fig. 13
center
Fig. 14,15 Wound with bone exposed
Fig. 16,17 The wound is recovering after the apply of
temporary skin graft
Although artificial skin can help patients to regenerate their skin or can perform skin’s function, it still has its drawbacks.
Pros and Cons
For the three types of artificial skin, they share some common advantages and
disadvantages compared with that of traditional skin graft. But in general these two
methods still possess some strengths and flaws in common, as shown in the last row of
the table.
Pros
Cons
Possessing regenerating power
Real skin resemblance
Unlimited supply
Reduced scarring[14]
Low chance of immune response or infection
Long recovery time
Expensive[13]
Fragile [14]
Inability to be immediate substitute
Skin functions Impairment (sensations,
pressure, etc)
Fig. 18 A man holds a piece of artificial skin from Integra.
Grafts would be placed atop this piece.
Although there are still some imperfections like long recovery time, the ability to regenerate and
the unlimited supply of skin really solve many problems that were headaches of surgeons. So it is
believed that the advantages actually outweigh the disadvantages to a large extent.
Future Development
There are still some downsides of artificial skin as mentioned, but there have been many researches
being done to rectify the flaws and to perfect this technology.
Fig. 19 A surgeon performs a skin transplantation surgery using
artificial skin
1. Growing skin from stem cells in human hair [15]
This utilizes the differentiation ability of stem cells, but the technology for monitoring such processes is still
being studied.
2. Producing a fully-functional, lab-produced artificial skin graft[16]
It is hoped that artificial skin could be made solely in lab, with which is fully functional and possesses all
blood vessels and nerves.
3. Creating an automated production line process for manufacture[17]
The former two form a backdrop under which a manufacture plant could be set up for mass production of
skin grafts which cater for everyone where no immune responses would be triggered.
References
[1] Degree of burn. Available at : http://www.burnsurvivorsttw.org/burns/degree.html. Accessed April 13, 2010.
[2] Bensouilah J. and Buck P. Skin structure and function. Aromadermatology. Radcliffe;2006: 1-10.
[3] Wikipedia, Artificial skin . Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_skin. Accessed April 17, 2010.
[4] Metro, Health Report. Available at: http://www.hku.hk/facmed/healthedu/issue29/issue29.pdf . Accessed 17 April, 2010.
[5] People, New Transplantation. Available at: http://www.people.com.cn/BIG5/keji/1057/2645068.html. Accessed 17 April, 2010.
[6] Answers .com, How is artificial skin made? Available at: http://www.answers.com/topic/artificial-skin-2. Accessed 17 April, 2010.
[7] Langer R. and Vacanti JP . "Tissue Engineering," Science, May 14, 1993, pp. 920-921.
[8] Spray on Skin. Available at: http://www.biotechnology-innovation.com.au/innovations/pharmaceuticals/spray_on_skin.html. Accessed April 18, 2010.
[9] What is Artificial Skin? Available at: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-artificial-skin.htm. Accessed April 18, 2010.
[10] Langer R. and Vacanti JP. "Artificial Organs," Scientific American, September 1995, pp. 130-133.
[11] BBC NEWS| Health| Spray-on cells treat severe burns. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4208746.stm. Accessed April 18, 2010.
[12] McCarthy M. "Bio-engineered tissues move towards the clinic," The Lancet, August 17, 1996, p. 466.
[13] Smith C. Artificial skin offers genuine hope. Seattle Pi. 2001. Available at: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/burn231.shtml. Accessed 10 April, 2010.
[14] Edmonds M. How Lab-grown skin works. Howstuffworks. Available at: http://health.howstuffworks.com/lab-grown-skin2.htm. Accessed 10 April, 2010.
[15] Fraunhofer – Gesellschaft. Growing Artificial Skin From Hair Roots. ScienceDaily. 2008. Available at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080104140344.htm. Accessed 10 April, 2010.
[16] HowStuffWorks Anatomy Web site. Available at: http://health.howstuffworks.com/skin-care/information/anatomy/skin-graft5.htm. Accessed 10 April, 2010.
[17] Fraunhofer – Gesellschaft. Production Line for Artificial Skin. ScienceDaily. 2008. Available at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081209100838.htm. Accessed 10 April, 2010.