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Tokyo: In a world first, researchers have turned tissue cells into skin cells to help heal serious injuries, a technique that could revolutionize the care of burn victims and other serious injuries.
The research is the culmination of a decade of work and is promising for a variety of patients, including those with severe burns or elderly patients with pressure ulcers and other recurrent lesions. .
The study, published yesterday in the journal Nature, involves a technology called "cell reprogramming" in which genes are inserted into cells to transform them from one form to another.
"This is the first description of reprogramming tissue cells into skin cells," said lead author Masakazu Kurita. "I'm really excited about the results."
Kurita, a plastic surgeon and professor at Tokyo University, began working on the technique 10 years ago.
This process has been laborious and laborious.
The first step was to identify the genes in the skin cells, but not in the tissue cells, which could be isolated and inserted into the tissue cells for processing.
"We selected about 80 candidate genes from the skin cells, and then tried combinations," Kurita said.
His breakthrough came in 2014, when he successfully reprogrammed tissue cells into skin cells in a culture dish using a combination of 28 genes.
In 2015, he joined the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California to collaborate with a team of specialists from around the world.
In total, he and his colleagues conducted approximately 2,000 trials with different gene combinations, looking for the most efficient way to transform cells.
Finally, they obtained a combination of four genes and began testing it on wounds in mice.
They sealed the wounds of the surrounding skin to reproduce the harsh conditions at the center of a large burn or similar injury, with no adjacent skin to promote healing.
Thanks to this technology and existing drug treatments, they have been able to heal an injury of one centimeter in diameter in about two weeks.
"Our data suggest the feasibility of a completely new therapy that could be used for closing wounds of various causes," Kurita said.
The most obvious application would be severe burns covering large areas of the body, which are usually treated with skin grafts, he added.
"When areas affected by burns are extremely extensive and no skin is available for patients, no one can offer the patient a way to survive … our technique could offer a way."
But he warned that research was still far from available to patients, with perhaps another decade of work before that date. – AFP
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