Tissue engineering – a promising tool to obtain artificial skin for burn wounds treatment

Skin substitutes are used alone or more recently together with epidermis-substituting structures. Artificial skin do not induce keratinocyte growth and because of that it should be administered parallel with split-thickness skin graft (STSG) procedure or any other type of epidermal covering. In case of such substitute usage, apart from its functionality it is important not to inhibit epidermization process. The substitute structure can faithfully imitate human skin and include epidermal cover and dermis-like structure. Epidermal components are usually composed of epidermal cells – keratinocytes obtained from in vitro cultures. Nevertheless, to obtain a suitable number of cultured keratinocytes at least 3 weeks of culture are needed. In this time, the substitute outer surface should be protected with e.g. silicon layer, which temporarily substitutes epidermis. Dermis component can be built of various substances such as: collagen, glycosaminoglycan, polyglycolic acid or hyaluronic acid. Such component works as a matrix, which can be covered with dermis cells – fibroblasts also obtained during in vitro cultures.