K. Aainsqatsi [creativecommons license] via Wikimedia CommonsTreatment of major burns typically requires removing the damaged skin and covering the wound. If a graft of the patient’s own tissue is unavailable, tissue from a deceased donor may be used instead. Donor grafts have several drawbacks, chief being their rejection by the patient’s immune system within about 12 days. Subsequent donor grafts will be rejected by the immune system almost immediately, and other means must be used to protect the wound. Josef Kurtz and Curtis Cetrulo (Transplantation Biology Research Center, Boston, MA) hoped to expand options for protecting burned areas by engineering animal tissue transplants to avoid rejection by the human body.
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