LAUSR

Chronic wounds affect 1–2% of the world's population at any given time. These can be as a result of burns, or ulceration, and are essentially wounds which do not close. To facilitate closure, there are a number of biological products available which can be used as temporary skin replacements, or to promote tissue repair. These products usually replicate the two main layers found in human skin: the epidermis and dermis. Within the skin dermis the most abundant cell type are fibroblasts, whose primary role is to secrete extracellular matrix and support growth of cells in the adjacent epidermal layer. As fibroblasts within the skin are highly varied, the extracellular matrix in distinct locations of the dermis is also different; however skin substitutes do not usually reflect this diversity. In this study, from the UK, the researchers isolated three fibroblast sub‐types from human scalp skin dermis, and set about to characterise the extracellular matrix which the different sub‐types of fibroblasts synthesised in culture (i.e. developed in the lab, rather than on living skin). They found that the different fibroblast sub‐types produced extracellular matrix in culture reflective of the extracellular matrix found in distinct dermal locations in vivo (in living skin). They also found that certain fibroblast sub‐types were more proficient at supporting adjacent epithelial cells than others, which reflected the sub‐anatomical location from which the fibroblast sub‐types were originally isolated. The authors concluded that inspiration should be taken from the extracellular matrix which fibroblasts secrete to improve the design of biomimetic skin substitutes with improved therapeutic potential for skin tissue engineering.