Not only would that suck, but it would take forever to get anywhere. But, this is exactly how wound healing works. Cells have to lay down the "road" in order to grow. Cells can not automatically start growing in a wound. In fact, they require a structure (or matrix) to grow and move on. A release of matrix proteins creates this matrix structure, but this only happens one fragment at a time since the proteins are released as the cells move. This is then continued until the wound is closed. As is the case with the driving analogy, this process is slow. Very slow.
But what if this process could somehow be accelerated? What if the matrix was already in place before the cells started moving? Since I'm writing about this, you've probably realized that there must be a way to do just that. And yes, there is! With the help of an electrospinner, a scaffold can be created. From there, the scaffold can be inserted inside a wound, which will give the cells an open highway to start moving on. So now you're probably wondering, what's an electrospinner? To put it simply, it's a fancy machine that creates scaffolds:*
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Electrospinner setup. A) syringe pump. B) Electrospinning cage for maintenance of humidity and electrical current. C) syringe needle for distribution of gelatin fibers. D) target. E) power supply.
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But of course, the electrospinner can not make a scaffold from out of thin air! As the photo caption above hints, gelatin is used to create these scaffolds. Currently, two different gelatin's are being used: bovine and porcine. Bovine, which comes from cows and porcine which comes from pigs. The cool thing about gelatin is that it contains absolutely zero cells, which means that it will be easily accepted into our body regardless of the source.
Why does this matter?
Because, anything non-biological is considered really foreign to the body. So the best option is to use something biological. And sure, cells are biological, but if they don't belong to us, they're pretty foreign. So here's gelatin to save the day! At the moment, we have not determined which gelatin (bovine or porcine) is better for creating the scaffolds, so both are being used.
Now, the actual creation (or spinning) of the scaffold takes about an hour. This means, an hour of waiting and watching. It would be nice to leave the machine to do it's thing, but every now and then a falling fiber has to be moved or cleaned off the syringe needle. It may be a bit hard tell, but in the photo below the fibers are coming out of needle and landing on the target (a circular piece of aluminum foil):*
Once this is all set and done, we have ourselves a scaffold!*
I can now say I've made a highway. A highway for cells.
-Tudor
*A big thanks to Martha and Tatum for the photos!
So after you make these scaffolds, do you put cells on to see how fast they cover the area? Is that the next step?
ReplyDeleteThe next step is to test the mechanical and architectural properties of the scaffold. This is done in order to, ultimately, create a scaffold with similar properties to skin.
DeleteA gelatin scaffold...wow. For any size wound?
ReplyDeleteYep! A large scaffold can be spun and then trimmed down to whatever size is necessary.
DeleteHow does wound depth work with scaffolding? For instance, would scaffolding need to be layered more heavily within a two inch deep wound rather than a one inch deep wound? Or will both heal at relatively the same rate with the same amount of scaffolding after the it's placed?
ReplyDeleteThe thickness of skin is pretty uniform around the body. There are a few exceptions, most notably the skin on our hands and feet (which is thicker). Since the scaffold serves as a structure to grow the skin cells, only the thicker skinned areas of our body would require more than one layer of scaffolding.
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