Health

By Pesach Benson • June 11, 2025

Jerusalem, 11 June, 2025 (TPS-IL) — Israeli scientists developed a revolutionary bioengineered skin graft that dramatically accelerates the healing process for burn victims — cutting recovery time in half compared to current treatments. Wednesday’s announcement by Tel Aviv University and Sheba Tel Hashomer Medical Center comes as Israel grapples with a high number of burn injuries from the war.

“This research was born out of necessity,” said Prof. Lihi Adler-Abramovich, who co-led the study alongside PhD student Dana Cohen-Gerassi at Tel Aviv University’s Laboratory for Bio-Inspired Materials and Nanotechnology. “Surgical intervention is often essential for serious burns, but the current gold-standard treatment—autologous skin grafting—requires harvesting healthy skin from other areas of the body. That can be especially problematic when a patient has extensive burns and little undamaged skin left.”

The new graft is produced from the patient’s own cells, making it both biocompatible and robust. According to the team, the engineered skin is more stable, flexible, and easier to handle than existing solutions. In animal models, it achieved full wound closure in just four days—compared to the eight days required by standard therapies. The research was recently published in the peer-reviewed Advanced Functional Materials.

Israel’s Sheba Medical Center already offers one of the most advanced alternatives, known as cultured epidermal autografts (CEA), where a small skin biopsy is used to grow skin cells in the lab. But even this technique has major drawbacks. “CEA grafts are very fragile and consist of only the upper layer of the skin,” Adler-Abramovich said. “They shrink significantly after removal from culture, sometimes requiring up to 30 separate grafts just to cover a single limb. And they’re grown on mouse-derived cells, which poses regulatory and safety challenges.”

The newly developed skin equivalent eliminates these problems by mimicking the structure of natural human skin and avoiding the use of animal-derived materials.

“We designed a nanofiber scaffold made from PCL—a polymer already approved by the FDA—and combined it with a short bioactive peptide that promotes cell adhesion and growth,” explained Cohen-Gerassi. “We then seeded this scaffold with skin cells derived from a patient’s biopsy. Remarkably, the cells self-organized just like in real skin: fibroblasts formed the lower dermal layer, and keratinocytes formed the upper epidermal layer.”

The urgency of the war drove the team to translate years of research into real-world impact. “Since October 2023, Sheba has treated many young people with severe burns,” said Dr. Ayelet Di Segni, director of Sheba’s Tissue Bank and Green Skin Engineering Laboratory. “We felt a responsibility to bring our lab-based knowledge directly to the bedside. Our aim is to develop a skin graft that can truly transform recovery for both soldiers and civilians.”

One of the key advantages of the new graft is its physical durability. “Our graft does not shrink, curl at the edges, or tear upon contact,” said Dr. Marina Ben-Shoshan of Sheba’s Green Center for Skin Graft Engineering. “In model studies, it not only accelerated wound healing but even triggered the growth of essential skin structures like hair follicles.”

The material used in the scaffold is not only biocompatible but scalable. “The nanofibers are produced using a spinning process that’s both efficient and cost-effective,” said Dr. Amit Sitt of Tel Aviv University’s School of Chemistry. “This opens the door to mass production and the possibility of incorporating additional healing agents in the future.”

Prof. Josef Haik, Head of Sheba’s Plastic Surgery Division and National Burn Center, praised the breakthrough as a potential game-changer in personalized medicine. “Made entirely from a patient’s own cells, this graft is strong, flexible, and easy to handle,” he said. “It’s a major advancement in burn care and offers new hope for recovery and quality of life.”

The team is already planning the next steps of clinical trials and regulatory approval.

“This is just the beginning,” said Prof. Yossi Haik. “We’re committed to bringing this technology to patients as quickly and safely as possible.”