A badly injured patient who requires skin grafting usually has to do away with his healthy section of skin as the doctors replace the badly damaged skin with it. This painful procedure creates an extra wound on an already injured patient. It would be a blessing if an off-the-shelf skin replacement product was available. Now thanks to British scientists who have developed an artificial skin, which the surgeons would go to the fridge, retrieve the right size and place it on the wound, where it would be held in place with a steri-strip. This lab-grown skin is a result of biotechnology firm Intercytex which could revolutionize the treatment of burns victims. Sections of skin, the same thickness as that on the body, are grown in square trays in the lab. Each tray contains millions of fibroblasts, the cells responsible for the production of collagen the protein that gives skin its strength and elasticity. After six or seven weeks, the cells and collagen knit together to form a section of skin-like material.

When the lab-grown skin was examined under the microscope, it was virtually indistinguishable from the natural skin, with the body's network of blood vessels stretching across the artificial patch and the transplanted skin was not rejected by the body.
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