People with scars on the face and other exposed parts of the body will no longer face any embarrassment from those ugly marks and they will no longer need to undergo painful skin grafting, where a slice of the thigh skin is removed to cover the scars. Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology in Leipzig and the euroderm GmbH have been granted license to grow dermal tissue for grafting on chronic wounds.

The most interesting portion of the new therapy is perhaps the source of the dermal tissue - hair follicles. We are used to seeing the hairs growing out of the skin but from now, skin will grow from hair. The hair roots will be the source of the stem cells to be precise. The new technique is known as EpiDex.

Adult stem cells are extracted from the hair roots and the cells grow for about two weeks, after which the nutrient solution — in which the growing cells are immersed — are reduced to expose the upper sides of the cells to the surrounding air. The increase in oxygen pressure at this point on the surface of the cells helps them differentiate into skin cells.

This new technique is definitely a marvelous breakthrough. However, I am not sure whether people with not a single strand of hair on their head can cover their scars through this method, as the technique extracts hairs from the back of the person’s head to extract the stem cells.

Image: flickr

Source: science daily163239