Scientists Created the First Fully-Functioning Bioengineered Skin

The view of our transhuman future got a little clearer this week, as scientists have discovered a way to bioengineer artificial skin that looks and functions very much like normal skin. While scientists growing human organs in the lab is nothing new, melding them with the rest of the body is still a cybernetic conundrum. Now Swiss researchers believe they've made a breakthrough.

Researchers say they've figured out how to engineer tissue equipped with not only blood vessels, but lymph vessels too—a crucial discovery since lymph vessels are responsible for transporting fluid out of the tissue and into the bloodstream, to stop it from building up and killing the artificial organ before it can meld with the rest of the body.

A team at the University Children's Hospital Zurich created the skin grafts from human cells from blood and lymph vessels, which grew in a gel for three weeks. When the grafts were transplanted in rats, the artificial skin morphed into normal skin that continued to grow healthy cells. Researchers say they're confident they'd have the same success in human trials, which are up next.

"These data strongly suggest that if an engineered skin graft containing both blood and lymph vessels would be transplanted on human patients, fluid formation would be hindered, wound healing would be improved and regeneration of a near natural skin would be greatly promoted," said study author Daniela Marino. The results were published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

If the grafts works for humans too, the next step is adding in natural pigment, sweat glands, nerves, and hair follicles, researchers say, so the artificial would both look natural and function normally.

This is exciting news if you happen to be in the field of tissue engineering or are sporting scars from a major burn. After all, stopping the body from rejecting transplants, whether it's organs from donors or grown in a petri dish, is the holy grail of regenerative medicine.

For the rest of us, we can chuck this latest could-be breakthrough on top of the growing pile of research and technology advancing the bionic superman—mind-controlled limbs, 3D-printed body parts, DIY cyborgs. Scientists are also working on artificial skin that’s super-sensitive to the touch. Once we’re walking around with replica body parts bioengineered to replace damaged tissue, how long until we decide to start enhancing them too?