Dermal Tissue Engineering

Skin defects resulting from trauma, burns, and disease can cause skin necrosis and other chronic disorders. For the treatment of skin injuries, several strategies are currently adopted. Although they are proven to be clinically effective, these strategies face several challenges like inadequate vascularization, poor adherence to wound site, high cost, and inability to synthesize skin appendages. This chapter summarizes the progress of engineered skin substitues, reviews some critical aspects of skin biology, and highlights future developments that need to be undertaken for synthesizing bioengineered skin. The article gives insight on nanotopography-guided skin tissue engineering and stem cell therapy. The merits and demerits of fetal tissue engineering for scarless wound therapy are also discussed in detail.