TEL AVIV, Israel — Researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU) and Sheba Tel Hashomer Medical Center have developed an innovative bioengineered skin equivalent for grafting in burn victims. The bioengineered skin produced from the patient’s own cells is more stable, robust, and flexible than current treatments, making it easier to handle. In a full-thickness wound model, it achieved wound closure in half the time of standard therapies.
The pioneering study was driven by the ongoing war and the surge in severe burn injuries, which underscored the urgent need for better treatment solutions.
The research was led by Professor Lihi Adler-Abramovich and PhD student Dana Cohen-Gerassi from the Laboratory for Bio-Inspired Materials and Nanotechnology at the Goldschleger School of Dental Medicine at TAU’s Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. The paper was published on April 9, 2025, in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.
“Surgical intervention is often essential for second-degree burns and above to restore skin, prevent infection, and save lives,” Professor Adler-Abramovich explains. “The current gold-standard treatment is ‘autologous skin grafting,’ in which healthy skin is harvested from another area of the patient’s body and transplanted onto the burn site. However, this approach has significant disadvantages, in particular the need to damage healthy tissue in order to treat the injury. This becomes especially problematic in cases of extensive burns, where the availability of intact skin is limited.”
The need for advanced solutions is particularly urgent in wartime, with many soldiers suffering from burns. For both soldiers and civilians, a durable bioengineered graft could significantly improve chances for recovery and a good quality of life.
“Since October 2023, Sheba has treated many young people with burn injuries,” says Dr. Ayelet Di Segni, Director of the Sheba Tissue Bank and the Green Skin Engineering Laboratory at Sheba, who contributed to the research. “At such a time, bringing knowledge accumulated in the lab directly to the patient’s bedside becomes an urgent and tangible goal. Our aim is to develop a graft that can truly transform the process of recovery.”
To address this challenge, researchers from TAU and Sheba Medical Center collaborated to develop multi-cellular, multi-layered bioengineered skin grafts designed to mimic the properties and function of natural skin, without shrinking, tearing upon contact, or relying on animal-derived additives.
“We designed a nanofiber scaffold made of a polymer called PCL, which is already FDA-approved, and combined it with a bioactive peptide, a short amino acid sequence that promotes cell adhesion, growth, and proliferation,” explains Cohen-Gerassi. “We then seeded this scaffold with skin cells derived from a patient’s biopsy. Remarkably, the cells organized themselves naturally: fibroblasts populated one side of the scaffold, while keratinocytes grew on the other, mimicking the structure of real human skin.”
Dr. Marina Ben-Shoshan, senior researcher at Sheba’s Green Center for Skin Graft Engineering, adds, “Our graft is unique in that it does not shrink, and is durable, flexible, and easy-to-handle. Implantation in model animals has yielded impressive results, accelerating the healing process. While the standard treatment closes half of the burn wound in eight days, with our method, this took only four days. Moreover, we observed that essential skin structures, such as hair follicles, began to grow.”
“The bioengineered skin we’ve developed represents a true breakthrough in burn care. Made entirely from the patient’s own cells, it is strong, flexible, easy to handle, and significantly accelerates healing,” says Professor Yossi Haik of Sheba Medical Center. “This is a major step towards personalized therapies that can greatly improve the recovery and quality of life of severe burn victims, both soldiers and civilians. In the next phase, we plan to conduct trials in additional models and advance the necessary regulatory processes to bring this innovative technology closer to clinical application.”
Other collaborators for the study included Dr. Amit Sitt of TAU’s Sackler School of Chemistry, Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences; Dr. Moti Harats, Head of the Israeli National Intensive Care Burn Center at Sheba; Dr. Adi Liiani of the Green Skin Engineering Laboratory at Sheba; Professor Itzhak Binderman of TAU’s Goldschleger School of Dental Medicine; Professor Yosi Shacham-Diamand of TAU’s Fleischman Faculty of Engineering; and Tomer Reuveni and Offir Loboda from TAU.
*
Preceding provided by American Friends of Tel Aviv University