Printing Skin Cells on Burn Wounds

Skin is the body's largest organ. Loss of the skin barrier results in fluid and heat loss and the risk of infection. The traditional treatment for deep burns is to cover them with healthy skin harvested from another part of the body. But in cases of extensive burns, there often isn't enough healthy skin to harvest.
During phase I of AFIRM, WFIRM scientists designed, built and tested a printer designed to print skin cells onto burn wounds. The "ink" is actually different kinds of skin cells. A scanner is used to determine wound size and depth. Different kinds of skin cells are found at different depths. This data guides the printer as it applies layers of the correct type of cells to cover the wound. You only need a patch of skin one-tenth the size of the burn to grow enough skin cells for skin printing.
During Phase II of AFIRM, the WFIRM team will explore whether a type of stem cell found in amniotic fluid and placenta (afterbirth) is effective at healing wounds. The goal of the project is to bring the technology to soldiers who need it within the next 5 years.

3-D Printing for Head and Face Injuries

 

 Craniofacial trauma is among the most debilitating forms of injury because of the important functional and aesthetic roles of the face and skull. Blast injuries and injuries from high velocity projectiles are difficult to repair with current methods and there is a need for novel approaches to generate replacement tissues such as bone, nerve, blood vessels, fat, and muscle. During Phase II of AFIRM, the WFIRM team will explore printing these complex tissue components for facial and skull reconstruction using a 3-D printer.

 

Oxygen-Generating Materials

When tissues in the body are deprived of oxygen, the irreversible process of tissue death begins. For military personnel, this can occur when blast injuries damage blood vessels and interrupt the blood supply to the arms or legs. But what if there was a way to temporarily provide oxygen to muscle tissue and keep it alive?
Institute scientists are using safe, natural chemicals that generate oxygen in a variety of projects - from a treatment to promote limb salvage to incorporating the particles into organ scaffolds. With limb salvage, the particles, in the form of an injectable gel, could potentially slow muscle death until a surgeon could operate and restore the blood supply.  The goal is to develop a treatment that medics could carry with them - as a way to buy time and provide a temporary burst of oxygen until a patient could get medical treatment.