'Living Bandages' Heal Burns with Patient's Cells....

[Guest guest]

Any comments on this article?? I found it extremely interesting....

 

Angel Huggzz

Linda or Angel

 

=============

 

'Living Bandages' Heal Burns with Patients' Cells

1 hour, 23 minutes ago

 

By Patricia Reaney

 

LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists have developed "living bandages,"

made from a patient's own cells, which speed healing for burns and

diabetes sufferers.

 

The biological bandages, launched at the British Burns Association

meeting on Tuesday, have been used successfully on patients with severe

burns and diabetics with chronic wounds.

 

"It is a convenient way of using the patient's own cells to heal

wounds," Professor Sheila MacNeil, of the University of Sheffield, said

in an interview.

 

"This is a simple dressing to take laboratory-expanded cells and deliver

them back to patients' wounds."

 

MacNeil, who developed the bandages called Myskin with her Sheffield

colleague Professor Robert Short, said the bandages can be placed on

wounds five to seven days after a sample of cells has been taken from

the patient and grown on specialized discs in the laboratory.

 

After the bandage has been applied to the wound, the discs release the

cells and prompt new layers of skin to grow in the damaged areas. The

bandage is removed after the cells have migrated to the wound.

 

Doctors have been using patients' own cells to heal wounds for years.

Myskin, which was developed after 10 years of research, takes the

technique further because the cells are grown on the bandage surface and

it is put directly on to the patient's wound.

 

"It makes it simpler all round," said MacNeil. "You can get a much

faster healing than you would have done without them."

 

Myskin has been successfully used on a young boy suffering burns to his

legs and chest from a bonfire accident, a 28-year-old with similar

injuries and an 80-year-old man who had been badly burned on his face

and body.

 

There are around 1,000 severe burn injuries in Britain each year.

 

The biological bandages have also helped to heal chronic wounds from

persistent ulcers in diabetes patients. In Britain alone, three million

people suffer from chronic wounds and 5,000 foot or toe amputations are

performed on diabetics because of ulcerous wounds.

 

MacNeil said Myskin also speeds the healing of donor sites where skin

grafts are taken to replace burned skin.