Tissue Engineering of Commercial Skin Substitutes

Cultured human skin substitutes were initially developed, by Rheinwald and Green in 1975. The limiting factor in this product was the accessibility of autologous normal skin for grafting. Skin substitute introduced to overcome the lack of skin donor sites in sever damaged skin like chronic ulcers, major burns, and extensive full-thickness wounds, where autografts are not available to replace. This restriction typically results in a larger risk of death, extended hospital stays and increased costs for the National Health Service. Therefore, the wounded area and skin damaged, in such an in-depth wound, required the invention of varied skin substitutes.Over the past 3 decades, there has been considerable investigation and improvement of synthetic materials or skin grafts in the laboratory for skin replacement. The development and clinical use of bioengineered components of the various skin layers have been made significant progress over the years. Since the perfect properties of skin substitute are well-defined, a vital need for tissue-engineered skin bio constructs and research continues to be essential. Recently, skin grafting has improved to biosynthetic and tissue-engineered living skin replacements from the primary autograft and allograft preparations. Theoretically, these days skin substitutes are often categorized as either permanent or temporary; epidermal, dermal or composite; and biological or synthetic. This review study aims at achieving a helpful insight in commercial products that already available for clinical use as well as describe those under development.

Keywords:

Tissue engineering , skin substitute , biomaterials , wound healing , bioengineered skin