denovoSkin™ from CUTISS AG is on its way to becoming a revolutionary therapy for large skin defects (e.g. due to burns). The treatment is carried out with "personalised tissue". The production of such transplants on a large scale has now been achieved with denovoCast from CSEM.
Large skin defects - a challenge in health care
Millions of people worldwide suffer from severe skin defects that require surgical treatment to restore the function of the skin. Such skin defects are caused, for example, by burns or surgical scars and can be physically and psychologically very stressful for the patient.
Today's treatment method consists of taking a thin layer of the patient's healthy skin (autologous skin graft), which consists of epidermis but only few parts of the dermis. Since sufficient dermis is missing in the autologous skin graft, the clinical result too often leads to undesirable scars, which are problematic in further care.
denovoSkin™ - a revolutionary therapy
To create denovoSkin™, a small biopsy of healthy skin is taken from the patient. These cells are combined with a hydrogel to create a dermo-epidermal skin graft, after which denovoSkin™ is ready for transplantation to cover the patient's skin defect.
The product is made from a biopsy of the patient's skin about the size of a postage stamp. This massively reduces the size of the donor area required, which is of great advantage especially in the case of large-area wounds. As denovoSkin™ is autologous, i.e. consists of cells from the patient, the skin is not rejected after transplantation. In addition, denovoSkin™ is expected to result in minimal scarring after transplantation due to its special dermo-epidermal structure. The quality of life of patients and relatives would be significantly improved.
Clinical studies on the safety (phase 1) of denovoSkin™ have been completed. Clinical trials to investigate the efficacy of the product (phase 2) are currently being conducted at various hospitals in Switzerland and the EU and are supported by Wyss Zurich.
CSEM denovoCast - a solution for production
CSEM has developed the world's first automated system denovoCast for obtaining autologous skin grafts for CUTISS AG. Several denovoSkin™ grafts - shown as an example - with a total area of 4 x 100 cm2 can be produced in parallel with denovoCast. The core is the "graft box" in which the denovoSkin™ graft grows from the donor's own body cells under sterile conditions. After ten days of development, the graft is ready for use. The system is patent-protected and opens up the use of denovoSkin™ on a large scale. CSEM was able to use its many years of experience in the field of automation for the life science industry with its special requirements to develop denovoCast for CUTISS.
Additional information
Background CUTISS AG and denovoSkin™ here.
Press release 24th June 2021.
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