"[The artificial skin] is soft and pliable, unlike other substances used to cover burned-off skin."
John F. Burke
Human skin is a marvel of engineering. It is tough yet stretchy and pliable, and acts as an impermeable barrier against water loss, infection, and cell damage from the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays. With this range of properties, it is a very difficult material to duplicate.
John F. Burke, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in the United States, was looking for a reliable skin replacement for the treatment of burn victims. Skin is usually grafted from other parts of the patient's body, but in cases where the burns cover 50 percent or more of the body, often there is not enough healthy skin to cover the damaged area.
In the 1970s Burke teamed up with loannis V. Yannas, a chemistry professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who was studying a stretchy protein called collagen that naturally occurs in animal tendons. Burke and Yannas combined collagen fibers taken from cowhide with long sugar molecules from shark cartilage to create a gridlike polymer membrane. They dried this membrane and stuck it onto a layer of viscous plastic.
The two layers, about as thick as a paper towel, offer a barrier against infection and dehydration while acting as a scaffold on which new skin cells can grow. As the patient's skin grows back, the artificial membrane breaks down naturally and can be peeled away. The new skin is not scarred and looks like normal skin, albeit without sweat glands or hair follicles.
In 1981 Burke and Yannis proved that their artificial skin worked on patients with 50 to 90 percent burns, vastly improving their chances of recovery.
