The skin gun

When someone survives being severely burnt, only to die from their injuries later, it's not usually the burn, itself, that kills them. Instead, it's the infections that set into unprotected flesh before the skin has a chance to heal. This National Geographic video clip is about a new way of treating burn victims—closing open wounds faster by spraying them with a protective coating of skin cells grown from the patient's own.

Quick note: The skin gun uses adult stem cells, but it's not likely to be affected by the problems with adult stem cells that I told you about earlier today. That's because this technique doesn't rely on forcing a specialized cell to become un-specialized.

All adults have stem cells in their bodies, it's just that these stem cells can only become one, specific type of cell. Skin stem cells naturally grow into new skin cells. All you have to do, in this case, is grow a lot of them in a short amount of time. That's easier than trying to make a skin stem cell become a bone cell, or a neuron.

Thanks to Dean-o!

• [Anonymous]

  I love how YouTube will let me see the burned hand placeholder image doodad, but the video itself is blocked in my country ‘on copyright grounds’. I don’t know if that’s better or worse than the video services that let me watch the ads before telling me they won’t show me the video.

• [Anonymous]

  Does it work when the skin is gone, down to muscle? I just remember lying in the hospital after a car tore off my foot, and going through the graft operations and the therapy between to remove what didn’t take – it was almost as painful as when the car hit me. The picture – I’ve seen equal on my body, but I think most don’t need to see it unless forced.

• [Mark Frauenfelder]

  I like it when someone a lot smarter than me has the same stupid haircut I do.

  • [MadRat]

    Yeah, sure, Nobel prize level science and everything but Jörg Gerlach has Wolverine hair. Your hair isn’t quite Wolverine hair.

    • [Brainspore]

      There’s got to be some connection between that hair and improbably accelerated healing ability.

  • [Anonymous]

    It seems closer to a structure than a cut.

• [Anonymous]

  To be honest it makes perfect sense, get a thin coat of cells that can themselves grow, attach to the body underneath and then spread to the nearby untreated areas and rebuild the skin. Waiting to grow a skin grafts is kinda ridiculous, taking skin, growing it to be bigger and then “planting” it back onto an area the same size as the skin you just grew. Makes much more sense to deposit a bunch of small “growth centers” that can grow together. It’s like planting grass in your yard, if you planted a bunch of small bits of grass all over the yard, each would grow and spread to the nearby areas and you would get a full lawn after less time than if you took the same amount of starter material and grew it to be the correct large size of your lawn and layed it down in one operation. Way to use common sense to increase medical abilities, hope it helps lots of people.

• [Digilante]

  “but it’s not likely to be effected”

  affected = have an effect on, influence, or change
  effected = perform something, obtain a result

  Please don’t perpetuate the confusion ;-)

  • [Maggie Koerth-Baker]

    Some day, I will be able to get that right on the first try. Today is not that day. Fixed now.

    • [Digilante]

      Looking at all the others who pointed out the error, I must conclude that you’re facing the most anal retentive readership of any blog. I think I’m going to go stand in the corner now and hate myself with a whip :-)

      To others: As for the silly country limitation on the video, just go to youtube, type in the video title, and voila:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y5H9Sasq5U

      Excellent post as usual Maggie.

      • [Anonymous]

        You should really hyphenate “anal retentive” when used as a modifier….

• [caipirina]

  while cool and such .. anybody else feels this plays like an infomercial?

  and yes, video content localisation SUCKS

• [Anonymous]

  I was looking for the picture of lasagna cupcakes.

• [P1rat3]

  Please change “effected” in the article to “affected”.

  :)

• [Jack]

  This all sounds cool, but I just came back from eating some pizza, having some wine, topping it off with a brownie and tea… AND THE IMAGE OF A SEVERELY BURNED HAD THROWN IN MY FACE!

  Still good news. Now I need to wash that image away with kittens. K now. BYE!

• [Niklas]

  “This video contains content from National Geographic, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.”

  So, I go to the source and it starts playing just good for two-three seconds and then stops and says “This video is not available for this platform.”

  WTF Nat Geo!?

• [George William Herbert]

  As someone who’s been on fire before, I heartily support this technology getting tested and if generally successful rolled out for wide use.

• [ncinerate]

  Seems incredible. How in the world can the skin fully heal in just 4 days after spraying?

  Also curious how quickly they are able to go from seeing the burn patient for the first time, to being able to spray this skin cell goo onto them. I mean, they have to propagate the cells etc, I wonder how long it all takes. They make it sound like he showed up and they had cells ready to squirting almost immediately…

  • [ncinerate]

    Ahh, ignore the post – just watched the video again. It takes one and a half hours from biopsy to spray.

    Incredible.

    How in the world is he getting enough cell growth to cover a burn that large in one and a half hours?

    • [Anonymous]

      Maybe you don’t need total cell coverage, just enough to evenly “seed” the exposed membranes?

• [Emo Pinata]

  Am I the only one that things the Syringe pump is attached to a terrible nozzle?

• [BastardNamban]

  This is astounding tech. If I had had this when I got cut years ago with a flying red hot knife across the face in a freak shop accident, I would never have needed facial plastic surgery. I have a feint scar across my face 9 cm long, and this stuff would have healed my face so quickly it may never have scarred at all.

  Eh, it ain’t all bad. “chicks dig scars” some say. It gives me more character.

  The people I’m really glad for are like picklelady’s daughter. I can’t imagine what you must have gone through emotionally when that happened. I’m glad she will be ok. Thank god science has progressed to this level, where people who had it a lot worse than me can heal without life-altering scarification and disfigurement. People say “thank god”, but we really need to thank SCIENCE. And mankind. Man found the answer here, not god. All the praying in the world can’t give someone their skin back in 4 days. This can.

  Someone explain to me why scientists like this aren’t seen as role models, and why people in America mock the intelligent?

• [Muse]

  I was so disappointed when we got to the year 2000 and everyone didn’t have flying cars and personal robots. This is the kind of technology that makes me feel like we are finally living some semblance of the future we were promised.

  I wonder how bad the burns can be for this to still work…but I would prefer to only see the “after” photos.

• [Mantissa128]

  Yay, another “blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.” I can’t wait until we go post-scarcity, this is just dumb. For heaven’s sake, I have a Nat Geo magazine subscription.

  Link to video on Nat Geo site here. Now they can get their precious click-throughs.

  If it works this well though, it is stunning. Second-degree burns healed in four days? Unbelievable!

  Here’s a chaser.

  Cheers!

• [jjeff1]

  A number of years ago, I was helping a neighbor burn tent caterpillar nests. A little bit of white gas did something similar to me. An area on my calf about the size of my hand was burnt almost 360 degrees around my leg. It was a 2nd degree burn, probably not quite as bad as the picture in the video.

  The recovery though took several weeks. I recall spending 5 straight days in bed with my leg elevated, something about pooling fluids in lower extremities causes healing problems.

  The healed flesh is off-color and thinner than the other leg. It’s more prone to injury and sunburn.

  The fact that they can repair burns like this and have a 4 day rather than 4 week+ healing process is simply amazing.

• [libraryboi]

  “but it’s not likely to be effected”

  As per previous comments alerting you to the error, effect is a noun, affect is a verb. You are using the incorrect word in your post.

• [tylerkaraszewski]

  It’s really kind of annoying to have to switch my VPN connection back and forth between the US and the UK because everyone wants to be all nationalistic with their internet videos.

• [davejenk1ns]

  For all you grammar-nazis…
  xkcd.com/326/

• [siliconsunset]

  Cromartie didn’t have to kill that scientist after all…

• [hadlock]

  “Uh, yes, if you want we can use this experimental technique… but first you’ll have to sign this 40 page waiver that says if you ever get cancer from this treatment, you won’t sue us or the hospital”

• [Transit]

  Uh guys. I watched the video and while this seems miraculous the video mostly shows video of a completely healed guy and someone’s unidentified burned hand. They even mention that this hand is what he might have looked like. I call BS on this! This is not science. Show me the entire process with time stamps thorough out for the same person. Love the concept; not in love with this presentation which seems way too good to be true. $0.02.

• [Laroquod]

  First the YouTube video is blocked in Canada on copyright grounds, and then visiting the alternate link direct to National Geographic’s site crashed my browser, ditching close to 30 tabs. Couldn’t get them back, I had to seek them out again and clicked them one by one. In total this video just wasted about half an hour of time and I still haven’t seen the video. The only value I can possibly take from this experience is to remember never to attempt to click a National Geographic video on the web, ever again.

  Thanks, National Geographic. You totally fail at both YouTube and the internet.

• [pinehead]

  Transit makes a valid point, but I’ll choose to remain hopeful on this one. As was said, it looks like the holy grail of burn surgery.

• [picklelady]

  My 6 year-old fell into a campfire 4 months ago, and had BioBrane attached to her hands and forearms:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPFAPeAkchE&feature=related

  No antibiotics for infection, just a wrap made of pure silver, which is naturally antimicrobial.

  she went from absolutely no skin (but 2nd degree burns, no muscle damage, which would require grafting) to full skin in less than 2 weeks (12 days). It grew skin so well, in fact, that she had webbed fingers and skin over her fingernails.

• [bobbcorr]

  Praise G_d from whom all blessings flow. And wow-wee-waa for that skin gun. I hope this becomes the sina qua non of burn treatments in like, an hour. Wowza.

• [Duffong]

  So we can rebuild the largest organ on our body in 4 days, replace a heart, re-grow numerous organs, but we’re still lightyears away from the hair gun. Until then, I’ll remain unimpressed.

• [Anonymous]

  Spray on skin was developed in Western Australia by Dr Fiona Wood and was used to great effect for victims of the Bali bombings in 2002. I can’t watch this video here so I don’t know if these techniques are related but it’s not a great stretch to have positive results in only a few days.

• [millrick]

  über-cool skin gun ≠ death ray

  ps: this video’s also available @
  http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/national-geographic-channel/shows/explorer-1/ngc-the-skin-gun.html

• [MrBawn]

  Really did not need to see Youtube’s thumbnail of a severely bunt hand.

• [ironix]

  “This video contains content from National Geographic, who has blocked it in your country in copyright grounds.”

  Somehow I don’t feel deprived given the default image on the video.