Spray-on-skin for burn victims

Rather than sheets of skin being laboriously grown over a period of a month and applied to the patient,stem cells are harvested from a small patch of healthy skin,put into a solution and sprayed back on to the affected area.

The process takes only 90 minutes, Dr Jörg Gerlach,who led the team,was quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying.

The spray-gun eliminates a major flaw of existing burns treatment,the time taken to grow new layers of skin in the lab,during which time patients can die from infection,say the scientists.

Dr Gerlach said the skin gun was like paint spraying,you just need a more sophisticated device.

In fact,the process,described as the holy grail of burn surgery involved isolating stem cells from a healthy patch of the patients skin,putting those cells in a water solution,and then spraying the mixture back on.

After being sprayed,the patients wound is covered with a special dressing that provides glucose,sugar,amino acids,antibiotics and electroytes to the treated area,to provide nutrition and clean the wound until the stem cells get established,say the scientists.