Artificial Skin, Biotech Companies, ATS (Advanced Tissue Science), Biosurface Technology, Organogenesis, Keratinocytes, Living Skin Equivalent (LSE)

www.molecular-plant-biotechnology.info

	Artificial Skin - There are three biotech companies in USA, which arc developing artificial skin to the stage of clinical trials (i) ATS (Advanced Tissue Science), located at La Jolla, California which is now merged with Neomorphics (Lexington, MA), (ii) Biosurface Technology (BTI, Cambridge, MA) and
(iii) Organogenesis. These three companies used different technological approaches, which are really the basis of all future tissue engineering. The real breakthrough in culturing artificial skin was made in 1970s, at Harvard. It was demonstrated that when an irradiated 3T3 fibroblast cell line is grown with skin cells (keratinocytes, which make 90% of the skin epidermis), 3T3 cells stimulated growth of skin cells and allowed their differentiation into epidermis. 3T3 cells are believed to secrete factors which help in growth and differentiation.