Navsaria H A, Myers S R, Leigh I M, McKay I A
Dept of Experimental Dermatology, London Hospital Medical School, UK.
Trends Biotechnol. 1995 Mar;13(3):91-100. doi: 10.1016/S0167-7799(00)88913-1.
Current tissue-culture techniques enable keratinocytes from a small piece of skin to be grown into sheets of epithelium, or cultured keratinocyte grafts, that are suitable for treating wounds. Serial subculture enables rapid expansion of a cell population, such that grafts of a total area equivalent to that of the surface of an adult can be obtained from an initial skin biopsy of approximately 2 cm2 in under one month. In this article, the methods currently used for culturing keratinocytes, the search for a fully functional replacement for the dermal elements of skin, and the prospects for clinical development of these technologies in the near future are discussed.
