Fetal Tissue Heals Burns

The Swiss researchers used a patch of fetal skin 1.5 inches square. They grew cells from it in tissue culture and let the cells spread out on sheets of a material called collagen, forming a kind of artificial skin. They cut that into pieces 3 1/2 by 5 inches and placed about four of them on 10-day-old burns in eight children. The burns were second- and third-degree, they said, and all would normally have undergone skin grafting.

The fetal-cell material disappeared, but it was not incorporated into the regenerating skin. The scientists determined that by testing the genes in a piece of skin taken from a healed burn in a female patient. The skin contained no male cells, which it would have if it contained any of the fetal material.

Skin cells secrete numerous chemical "growth factors" that cause progenitor skin cells to divide, spread out and attach to one another. Exactly how they differ from the cells of newborns or adults is uncertain.

"We are very busy with the characterization of these cells and their byproducts," Hohlfeld said.

A main problem with healed but heavily scarred burns is that they contract, limiting the motion of joints. Grafts frequently leave an uneven contour on the skin surface. Neither of these problems occurred in the eight children, according to the report. There was "total recovery of mobility, especially in hands and fingers."

The patients have been followed for one to two years. There was some color change in some areas, but the overall appearance of the healed burns was good, Hohlfeld said.

The team calculated that the small piece taken in this case could ultimately produce more than 2 million of the squares that were put on the burns.

One fetus could theoretically provide material for hundreds or thousands of burn victims, although Hohlfeld said he suspected that would not remove some people's objections to the use of tissue from an aborted fetus.