This might seem like a scene from Star Trek, because it is: some hapless redshirt gets burned by radiation or a phaser or something, and the doctor on board the ship sprays the burns with a high-tech gun of some sort, which immediately heals them. But this isn’t just science fiction. Dr. Jorg Gerlach at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh has created such a device: a "skin gun" that sprays stem cells on burns, which then heal in a matter of days.
Skin grafts are the most common method for treating burns, but those take weeks, even months, to heal. Time is critical, because even with proper care, burns are prone to infection. The skin gun, however, only takes 90 minutes for treatment, and only days for healing. It works like this: first, doctors collect skin stem cells from another part of the patient’s body. Then those stem cells are mixed with a water solution and placed in the skin gun. The gun (which is sort of like an airbrush with computer controls) sprays this solution on the burns. The wound is covered and allowed to heal, which only takes a few days. Not only is this process less painful than traditional skin grafts, it can also save lives because of how fast the healing occurs.
One of the first people to be treated by the skin gun was Matthew Uram, who received second-degree burns from a bonfire accident: his face and one of his arms were covered in burns. Just four days after the skin gun treatment, though, Uram’s burns were fully healed, with (and this is one of the most important things) no visible scarring. Star Trek may have done it first, but at least we're getting there in real life.
Via The Guardian
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