IBS GRANADA scientists manage to build artificial skin from umbilical cord stem cells
New achievement of the Tissue Engineering group belonging to the Biosanitary Research Institute of Granada. Scientists, belonging to this research group, have managed to build artificial skin for the first time from stem cells from the umbilical cord. Their work, published in the prestigious journal Stem cells translational medicine, demonstrates the ability of mesenchymal stem cells from Wharton's jelly of the umbilical cord to differentiate into epithelial cells and form epithelia lining the skin and oral mucosa.
To build the artificial skin, the researchers have used, in addition to this new type of coating epithelium, a fibrin and agarose biomaterial previously designed and developed by the Granada group.
Previous studies by this same research group, which were already awarded at the World Congress of Tissue Engineering held a few months ago in Seoul, already suggested the possibility that the Wharton cells of the umbilical cord could become epithelial cells. The present work is the confirmation of these initial studies and their application to two lining structures, the skin and the oral mucosa, which are increasingly in demand to repair existing lesions in these body locations.
Immediate use
One of the current problems with major burns is that, to apply current models of artificial skin, it takes several weeks to manufacture it from the patient's own healthy skin. "The creation of this new skin model with umbilical cord cells, which could be preserved and available in tissue banks, would allow for immediate use once the injuries occur, which would advance the application of artificial skin by several weeks," explains Antonio Campos, Professor of Histology at the University of Granada and one of the authors of this study.
In the work, in addition to the researchers from the tissue engineering group of the Department of Histology of the University of Granada (Ingrid, Garzón, Miguel González Andrades, Mª Carmen Sánchez Quevedo, Miguel Alaminos and Antonio Campos), researchers from the Department of Biology have collaborated Cellular at the University of Granada (Ramón Carmona), the University of Valencia (Carmen Carda) and the University of Florianopolis in Brazil (Juliano Miyake).
