By Nigel Hawkes - Health Editor (Times Newspaper)
PATIENTS suffering from burns could soon have new skin sprayed on like paint.
The technique, developed in Australia, is to be introduced to Britain next week in a series of workshops for surgeons.
The new ski - created from cells taken from undamaged parts of the patient's skin - is quicker to make, and cheaper and easier to use than the sheets of cultured skin now in use.
It can reduce scarring and be applied to areas that are often hard to graft, such as the soles, underarms, and the palms of the hands. More than 1200 patients have been treated in Australia using the method but only a handful so far in Britain.
Helen Goldfinch, chief executive of Clinical Cell Culture, the Perth-based company that owes the patents, says that the technique takes as little as five days to culture the skin and prepare the aerosol for spraying on the damaged area.
"Scarring is a major risk, and it tends to start about ten days after injury" she said. "Existing methods, which produces sheets of skin, take 17 to 21 days, so by the time the skin is ready scarring has begun.
"Our method takes only five days so there is no scarring to start. The pigmentation of the skin is also much better as a result of the reduced timescale".
The method was developed by Fiona Wood, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon who is director of the burns unit at Royal Perth Hospital in Western Australia. So far only one plastic surgeon in Britain, Remo Pappini, has used it.
The company plans to establish a single laboratory to produce the skin cultures for the whole of Britain. Although more expensive than traditional skin grafts, the technique costs much less than culturing sheets of skin.
Typically, to cover 1% of patient's body with sheets of skin would cost about £1,000, but the spray-on skin would cost £250.
It also reduces the number of days that patients need to spend in bed, the rate of infection, the use of antibiotics and the risk of rejection of the grafts, Ms Goldfinch said.
As well as treating burns, it can be used for pigmentation abnormalities such as vitiligo, and other cosmetic surgery.
Skin culture have been available for about a decade, competing with man-made alternatives such as Integra artificial skin. This product can be laid across wounds to form the basis for natural skin to grow back, and has been successful in many patients.
Best results are achieved using the patient's own skin cells, however. For large areas of damage, cells will be taken from healthy skin and sent the Clinical Cell Culture's laboratory, which will be established in either Birmingham or Oxford. There the cells will be grown into suspension ready for spraying on, and sent back to the hospital within a few days.
The timing of the treatment was vital, Ms Goldfinch said. For smaller wounds, the company has developed a kit which can be used in a clinic rapid repairs, avoiding the need for hospital stay.
Ms Goldfinch said that treating burns was just a start, and that the new method could eventually be applied to other areas of tissue regeneration.