German Laboratory Creates Pilot Automated Skin Factory
In 2009, the concept of a large-scale automated tissue factory was taken up and made into reality. The tissue laboratory, located at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) in the southwestern German city of Stuttgart, is beginning to produce human skin on an industrial level.
While this is only a pilot program, the factory is able to produce roughly 5000 penny-sized disks of skin per month. The skin is grown in a completely sterile environment by automated machines. The skin comes from a broth of cells and nutrients, which are then taken and spread into shape. While many medical trials need to be run on animals before they can be applied to humans, positive results may not be that far off. The primary need lies in skin grafts for burn victims and other forms of traumatic injury, where sealing up the skin layer is a high priority for recovery.
But the tissue engineering aspects aren’t as paramount as the production process. For years, tissue engineering has been on the verge of a revolution, changing lives as tissues and organs are made to repair and replace failing biology. While there have been some great leaps, and some truly remarkable, isolated breakthroughs, the revolution is still very far away. Replacement tissue generally must be customized to the individual patient and cultivating and shaping the organ is incredibly delicate, slow, and tedious. While it is a potential option on the individual level, such a cumbersome process could never be able to create an industry, where engineered tissue is widely available.
The completely automated process here is the first step towards that industry. Unless computerized machines can be built and programmed to perform the delicate and tedious work, this area of medicine will always stay a special-but-inaccessible panacea. This skin factory is not just a pilot for skin, but one of the first motes of a long awaited healthcare industry.
Skynet has also shown interest in the project.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,756809-2,00.html
While this is only a pilot program, the factory is able to produce roughly 5000 penny-sized disks of skin per month. The skin is grown in a completely sterile environment by automated machines. The skin comes from a broth of cells and nutrients, which are then taken and spread into shape. While many medical trials need to be run on animals before they can be applied to humans, positive results may not be that far off. The primary need lies in skin grafts for burn victims and other forms of traumatic injury, where sealing up the skin layer is a high priority for recovery.
But the tissue engineering aspects aren’t as paramount as the production process. For years, tissue engineering has been on the verge of a revolution, changing lives as tissues and organs are made to repair and replace failing biology. While there have been some great leaps, and some truly remarkable, isolated breakthroughs, the revolution is still very far away. Replacement tissue generally must be customized to the individual patient and cultivating and shaping the organ is incredibly delicate, slow, and tedious. While it is a potential option on the individual level, such a cumbersome process could never be able to create an industry, where engineered tissue is widely available.
The completely automated process here is the first step towards that industry. Unless computerized machines can be built and programmed to perform the delicate and tedious work, this area of medicine will always stay a special-but-inaccessible panacea. This skin factory is not just a pilot for skin, but one of the first motes of a long awaited healthcare industry.
Skynet has also shown interest in the project.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,756809-2,00.html
posted by Brian Moore at 8:04 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home