Scientists Save Child’s Life by Growing Him New Skin

Megalith

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Scientists have grown a replacement, genetically modified skin to cover almost the entire body of a seven-year-old Syrian boy who was suffering from a devastating genetic disorder. The treatment marks a rare and striking success for the field of regenerative medicine, which has been struggling to transform futuristic-sounding science into therapies that make a difference to patients.

Two years on the boy is doing well, his doctors said. His skin is healthy, he doesn’t need to take medication or use ointments, he is back at school, plays football and when he gets a cut it heals normally. A potential risk of the treatment is that the introduction of genetic changes could increase the chances of skin cancer – although the study found no evidence that dangerous mutations had been caused.
 
Amazing stuff here. Article, at least to me was not clear if he had to continue to have skin stem cells added to maintain his genetically modified skin.

Now how far can or will this go? Genetically modified skill that can resist heat/toxins/bullets :D
 
Glad the kid is OK. It would be nice if this news made the rounds in the Middle East or at least Syria. It might do the region and the world some good to see Western medicine helping a Syrian child and prevent a lot more death and suffering.
 
Amazing stuff here. Article, at least to me was not clear if he had to continue to have skin stem cells added to maintain his genetically modified skin.

From what it sounded like in the article, no.

From the article:
The skin contains its own supply of specialised stem cells, which allows the epidermis to be constantly renewed throughout our lives, with cells turning over roughly every month. This also allows scientists to grow grafts in culture, simply by taking a small sample.

So basically since they took healthy skin from the boy, they grew skin in the lab and grafted it onto him, and then the lab-grown healthy skin attached to the lower layers successfully, and is able to make its own stem cells like naturally-occurring skin.
 
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