Bioprinting Skin Directly Onto Burn Wounds

Revolutionizing burn care, 3D bioprinting technology is changing the game in burn wound reconstruction, changing the life of millions of patients to come. 

Burns are a significant cause of trauma, and over the years, the focus of patient care has shifted from simple survival to improving functional and superficial outcomes. More traditionally, closure is largely brought to burn wounds through the forms of conventional skin substitutes or skin grafts. Skin substitutes include temporary, biosynthetic dressings and permanent dermal replacements, both of which provide immediate coverage, reduce pain, and promote healing, aiding the process of skin regeneration. However, they do not contain all skin cell types and do not facilitate recapitulation of native skin physiology. Skin grafts, on the other hand, are surgical procedures that replace damaged skin with healthy skin from donor sites, which are usually hidden areas such as the thigh. The healthy skin is placed on the burn, often secured with staples or stitches to promote healing, allowing for minimise infection, reduce scarring, and improve function for the patient. However, the procedure carries potential risks including complications including infection, bleeding, or the graft not taking. 

This is where skin bioprinting comes in. Three-dimensional is an emerging technology that uses 3D printing techniques to deposit biological material to create artificial tissues and organs, where living cells and extracellular matrices can be ‘printed’ to create replacement organs, skin grafts, and intricate skin structures. This technology uses imaging data to create a precise digital model of the desired tissue or organ, then deposits living cells or composite materials layer by layer in a pattern that mimics the original organ. Once the bioprinting process is complete, the tissue or organ is incubated to promote cell maturation, allowing the cells to fuse and mature, creating functional tissue or an organ that can be used for transplantation, grafting, or other purposes. This provides promising potential to be used for disease modelling, personalised treatment, drug testing, and skin regeneration, improving wound healing compared to traditional wound dressings with an additional benefit of reduced animal testing. 

However, 3D bioprinting is still an emerging advancement, and its disadvantages and outcomes are not fully 100% determined. Some estimated setbacks include: high costs, limited scalability due to the lack of suitable raw materials, limited range of printable materials, complex technical requirements, restricting the technology to a few specialised research centres and institutions, regulatory challenges due to the lack of guidelines for standardised testing, and ethical considerations to printing functional human organs.

Overall, 3D bioprinting is a very transformative technology, and its use for wound reconstruction will lead to a paradigm shift in patient outcomes. The surgical world awaits further advancement and ground-breaking achievements with this new technology.

Written by Renee Wang at Incisionary

References

Varkey, M., Visscher, D. O., van Zuijlen, P. P. M., Atala, A., & Yoo, J. J. (2019). Skin bioprinting: the future of burn wound reconstruction?. Burns & trauma, 7, 4. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41038-019-0142-7 

Wu, H., & Oakley, A. (2023, May). 3D Bioprinting: An Overview — DermNet. DermNet. Retrieved February 8, 2026, from https://dermnetnz.org/topics/3d-bioprinting