Severe burns can leave people with scars that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. It’s no wonder many choose to submit themselves to skin grafting, a painful procedure that involves taking healthy skin from one part of their body and stitching it to the damaged one. But as stem-cell therapy evolved, a new treatment has been found for burn victims. We’re talking about a stem cells gun that shoots to heal #todaymagic
German researcher Dr. Jörg Gerlach discovered that by spraying stem cells on the burnt skin, the organ can recover and regrow without leaving a scar behind. According to the paper where his experiments were published, this treatment reduced the healing time, minimized complications and gave aesthetically pleasing results. In 2014, Gerlach sold the technique to RenovaCare. The company put his idea in an easier-to-use form – a SkinGun.
This gun uses a “cellmist” to regrow the damaged skin. The cellmist is a liquid suspension of a patient’s regenerative skin stem cells. These are taken from a healthy, square inch tissue area. SkinGun sprays on the mist and in days, the burns heal. There’s no need to create a new wound by doing a skin graft. Plus, unlike that procedure, this one doesn’t come with the added risk of causing restricted movement as grafts can’t grow in time.
“What I see as the future of burn treatment is not skin repair but rather functional regeneration of skin and its appendages—such as hair follicles, glands and fat,” says stem cell researcher Sarthak Sinha. “This could be achieved by engaging deeper layers of skin and its resident stem cells to partake in tissue regeneration.”
The next step for RenovaCare is to improve the technology so that it allows to heal third-degree burns just as easily.
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