Skin from the Lab

After burns and operations, skin transplants are often required. But with large-scale injuries there may not be enough of the patient’s own skin left, while skin from others is usually rejected. Founded in 2017, the UZH spin-off CUTISS has found a way to grow skin from the body’s own tissue: denovoSkin. For this, a small section of skin is removed from the patient and used to grow new skin in the lab. The process takes around a month. There are three advantages to this approach: Only a small tissue sample is needed, the resulting skin grows with the rest of the body, which is particularly important in children, and scarring is minimal. denovoSkin isn’t on the market yet, but CUTISS co-founder Fabienne Hartmann-Fritsch is hopeful: “If everything goes well, we will have a marketable product in three years”. 

Webseite : cutiss.swiss/de/cutiss-ag/