Skin Bioengineering Laboratory
Skin Bioengineering Laboratory
YouTube video (3:00min): Tissue engineering for burns treatment by A/Prof Shiva Akbarzadeh
About us
Severe burns are associated with considerable morbidity, mortality and psychosocial impacts. They are also among the most expensive traumatic injuries to treat and manage, entailing long periods of hospitalisation and rehabilitation, and costly wound and scar treatment.
Our laboratory, located in the Department of Surgery, is uniquely positioned to address challenges in burns treatment. We are part of the Victorian Adult Burns Service, the Alfred Health-run statewide service for all adult severely injured burns patients. We are committed to a bench-to-bedside model of research to develop life saving therapies and achieve better long-term patient outcomes, with several clinical trials in progress.
A major part of our work is in devising and refining surgical techniques and materials to transcend the limits of skin grafts, especially when burns affect more than 40 percent of the body surface. This includes developing skin substitutes that focus on regeneration rather than repair, as well as exploring the mechanisms of spontaneous healing and skin graft repair.
Our research questions include how structure and function is maintained in adult skin. We elucidate the cellular and molecular changes during spontaneous wound repair and how engineered skin grafts and native skin grafts interact with the body’s own repair and regeneration processes. The role of follicular and interfollicular stem cells during this process is also investigated. Understanding such processes allows for smarter design of skin substitutes.
Top 5 research questions
How skin structure/function is maintained in adults?
What happens when skin is wounded?
The role of stem cells in skin homeostasis and wound repair?
How skin grafting repairs wounds and reduces scarring?
Skin Tissue engineering for wound repair?
A phase I Clinical Trial Study of PR-HSE in Adults
Since the development of Cultured Epithelial Autograft or CEA, almost 50 years ago, limited alternative engineered skin have been introduced to the clinics. Generally, CEA and its variance, rely on presence of a dermal component for engraftment and they are often applied in combination with widely meshed split thickness skin grafts. Therefore, they do not substantially reduce donor skin requirements.
We, at the Alfred Health and Monash University, have engineered a personalised composite skin graft, the so-called platelet rich human skin equivalent or PR-HSE, with dermal, basement membrane and epidermal component to enhance regeneration rather than repair in wounds, using patients’ stem / progenitor keratinocytes and fibroblasts. Funding from Medical Research Future Funds, has enabled us to conduct a phase I clinical trial to investigate the safety and efficacy of PR-HSE for massive burn wound closure in adult patients.
