Skin printing and auto-grafting

Abstract

An apparatus and method for the production of substitute skin that advantageously reduces the amount of donor dermal cells needed from non-wound areas of a patient having a wound to be auto-grafted is reduced by using all of the harvested skin cells. A 3D printer is used to construct a wound graft product from the harvested skin cells without wasting any of the harvested skin cells. In a case of an irregularly shaped wound, wastage of harvested skin associated with trimming is avoided.

1 - 20 . (canceled) 
     
     
         21 . An autograft treatment method of a wound of a patient, comprising:
 (1) preparing the wound to be imaged;   (2) imaging the wound to obtain a set of images;   (3) based on the set of images of the wound, modeling a skin graft product, wherein the modeling is performed by a computer, processor, or other machine;   (4) harvesting dermal cells from a donor site of the patient;   (5) from the harvested dermal cells, preparing a live cell suspension;   (6) loading a plate into a three-dimensional printer;   (7) constructing a scaffold onto the plate;   (8) seeding the scaffold with cells from the live cell suspension, until the modeled skin graft product has been constructed;   (9) when the skin graft product has been constructed, removing the skin graft product from the printer and from the plate;   (10) after the removing step, placing the skin graft product in the wound.   
     
     
         22 . The method of  claim 21 , wherein in the scaffold-constructing step, the scaffold is constructed using little or none of the live cell suspension. 
     
     
         23 . The treatment method of  claim 21 , wherein the wound imaging step comprises photographing the wound. 
     
     
         24 . The treatment method of  claim 21 , wherein the modeling is three-dimensional modeling. 
     
     
         25 . The treatment method of  claim 21 , wherein in the harvesting step, an amount of dermal cells harvested is in approximately a 1:5 ratio of skin harvested to skin estimated to be needed to treat the wound by conventional skin grafting. 
     
     
         26 . The treatment method of  claim 21 , wherein in the harvesting step, a maximum size is a 4 cm 2  split-thickness graft using standard dermatome techniques. 
     
     
         27 . The treatment method of  claim 21 , wherein in the harvesting step, an amount of dermal cells harvested is does not exceed a 1:5 ratio of cells harvested to cells estimated to be needed to treat the wound by conventional skin grafting. 
     
     
         28 . The treatment method of  claim 21 , comprising dissociating and culturing the harvested cells in a culture medium. 
     
     
         29 . The treatment method of  claim 28 , comprising adding allogeneic fibroblasts and keratinocytes to the culture medium. 
     
     
         30 . The treatment method of  claim 21 , wherein the printer-loading step comprises loading an agar gel plate onto a platen of the printer. 
     
     
         31 . The treatment method of  claim 21 , wherein the scaffold-constructing step comprises constructing a scaffold of collagen. 
     
     
         32 - 33 . (canceled) 
     
     
         34 . The treatment method of  claim 21 , further comprising securing the skin graft product with sutures and covering the skin graft product with a bandage. 
     
     
         35 . The treatment method of  claim 21 , comprising constructing multiple skin graft products for a same wound. 
     
     
         36 . The treatment method of  claim 21 , comprising constructing a first skin graft product and a second skin graft product for a same wound, on different days. 
     
     
         37 . A skin graft product constructed from skin cells of a patient having a wound, wherein an amount of patient skin cells is less than the patient skin cells that would be estimated to be needed to treat the wound if only the patient skin cells were used. 
     
     
         38 - 48 . (canceled) 
     
     
         49 . An auto-grafting method for treating a wound of a patient, comprising:
 harvesting a quantity of skin cells from a patient;   auto-grafting onto the wound of the patient the quantity of harvested skin cells, with the quantity of autografted harvested skin cells being substantially equal to the quantity of harvested skin cells.   
     
     
         50 . The auto-grafting method of  claim 49 , wherein the auto-grafting step comprises auto-grafting a three-dimensional irregularly-shaped skin graft product. 
     
     
         51 . The auto-grafting method of  claim 49 , further comprising constructing, via operation of a three-dimensional printer, a skin graft product comprising the quantity of harvested skin cells. 
     
     
         52 . The method of  claim 21 , further comprising printing insulin into the skin graft product being constructed. 
     
     
         53 . The method of  claim 21 , further comprising printing or spraying amniotic membrane into the skin graft product being constructed.