[Skin tissue engineering in China].

Great progress has been made in the basic research and clinical application of skin tissue engineering in China over the past 20 years. It includes culture of epithelial cells and their preliminary clinical use, research and development of various dermal substitutes such as acellular dermal matrix, spongiform collagen membrane and high molecular weight polymer membrane, and modification of physical properties of dermal substitutes for the sake of raising their bioaffinity and vascularization, based on which composite skin containing epithelial cell layers has been constructed and used successfully in the repair of full-thickness skin defects. More recently, greater efforts have been made in the study of new epithelial seeding cells such as epithelial stem cell and hair follicle stem cell. With the work going into the center, it is hopeful into constructing an artificial skin that mimics the normal human skin in terms of structure and function with better viability of the transplant, so that it can eventually be used in clinical practice as a skin source for large area deep burn patients to improve the wound healing quality.