Portable 3D skin printer can heal wounds in minutes

Toronto: In a first, researchers have developed a portable 3D skin printer that deposits even layers of tissue to cover and heal deep wounds within minutes.

For patients with deep skin wounds, all three skin layers – the epidermis, dermis and hypodermis – may be heavily damaged.

The current preferred treatment is called split-thickness skin grafting, where healthy donor skin is grafted onto the surface epidermis and part of the underlying dermis.

Split-thickness grafting on large wounds requires enough healthy donor skin to traverse all three layers, and sufficient graft skin is rarely available. This leaves a portion of the wounded area “ungrafted” or uncovered, leading to poor healing outcomes.

Although a large number of tissue-engineered skin substitutes exist, they are not yet widely used in clinical settings.