STATUS OF CULTURED SKIN REPLACEMENTS

Since the late 1970's, advancing technology in culturing human skin ce lls has given rise to the possibility of the clinician being able to r outinely close large surface area skin defects with laboratory-prepare d human skin. Unfortunately, technical obstacles have delayed the wide spread acceptance of this technology. These factors include difficulti es in preparing and transferring fragile cultured epithelial sheets, a s well as frequent unsatisfactory ''take'' of cultured grafts on the w ound bed. In addition, it has become clear that furnishing a dermal la yer to the full-thickness wound may carry equal importance to the prov ision of epithelium. This review covers major factors involved with cu ltured skin technology and briefly discusses the future of the science of skin replacement.