A hope for burn victims

it is especially in the case of skin grafts in burn victims that these works represent a remarkable step forward. The skin is composed of a surface skin covering a dermis, and includes annexes: hair follicles producing hair or hair, and sweat glands, needed physiologically. For twenty years, with the removal of a piece of skin unscathed, it is able to produce in the laboratory of large skin surfaces, and lately one can associate with this skin dermis substitute. Many lives are saved, but the result leaves much to be desired both in aesthetic physiologically.

It also manages and has been for several years to grow human cells in the laboratory from dermal papillae. The dermal papilla in the skin are responsible for the production of hair follicles through the epidermis, themselves which produce the hair shaft or hair. Yet unfortunately, when these dermal papillae are cultured in a petri dish, and the cultured cells rapidly lose their inductive properties (production).

Researchers Colin Jahoda, Angela Christianio co-directors of the study, have just taken an important step. For the study published in PNAS, cells from seven people were cultured with the technique known as the "hanging drop" so that they assemble into spheres. Slipped between the dermis and epidermis fragments hairless human skin of the foreskin, then grafted onto the backs of mice, they caused the formation of hair follicles, skin structure which precisely produces the hair. The researchers found that in five of seven tests, the transplant has produced new follicles for at least six weeks. DNA analysis has shown that these new hair follicles were well trained human cells from seven people who had been taken out of the cells.

They are on track

The work of these researchers is a real breakthrough, says Danielle Dhouailly, Professor Emeritus of the University of Grenoble in a CNRS laboratory. This specialist in skin embryonic formation was particularly interested in the technique used in this work have just been published. By studying gene activity (long and costly study of the transcriptome) British and American researchers have indeed demonstrated the importance of the environment to conduct the activity of the genome: the grouping of cells into spheres, not only mime the round shape of dermal papillae, but especially in these cells induces a gene activity that resembles that in vivo dermal papilla cells.

"That said, they are on the right track, but not at the end of their sentence," notes the Dhouailly Prof. emphasizing that the transplanted cells in the skin are well produced hair follicles but these were thin and, above all, they produced no hair shaft which normally emerges from the skin. It remains to find out how to reactivate the entire genome required for induction of hair follicles producers.

This does not prevent talk about success and Dr. Angela Christiano, Professor of Dermatology and senior co-author of the study, believes that this technique "could make the hair transplant accessible to people with a small number of follicles in both men and women, or in patients who have suffered burns. " However, the researchers added that further work steps are necessary to find how these cells maintain at all their potential, thus producing hair and able to carry out tests on humans.

"That said, says Professor Dhouailly, the fundamental finding of this study is that the combination of cells sufficient to cause the activity of certain genes." Many studies seeking laboratory artificial organs such as the pancreas or kidney, would benefit those whose term reflects the PNAS.
This is a first in Europe, the team at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge (United Kingdom) managed to graft a heart that had stopped beating. The spectacular operation was carried out last week, a Londoner of 60 who suffered a stroke in 2008, says Le Monde.

The feat is that, so far, the grafted hearts were from a dead donor (including brain activity had ceased), but the organ was still alive (see box). But in Cambridge, this March 26, according to the BBC, surgeons have "revived" the heart of a dead donor, then transplant it could.
Increase by 25% the number of cores available

Already successfully tested by Australian surgeons in 2014, the operation is now possible with a new conservation system called Organ Care System. Unlike the traditional method (1), the heart is placed for three hours in a box, stored at body temperature and supplied with blood and nutrients.

"I feel in better shape from day to day, and this morning I have been wandering around the hospital without problems," thus entrusted to the BBC, Huseyin Ulucan, first in a long series of fortunate recipients . For if we are to believe Le Monde, the new technique could increase by 25% the number of hearts available for transplantation.