Skin Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

The skin is the largest human organ system. Loss of skin integrity due to injury or illness results in a substantial physiologic imbalance and ultimately in severe disability or death. From burn victims to surgical scars and plastic surgery, the therapies resulting from skin tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are important to a broad spectrum of patients. Skin Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicineÿprovides a translational link for biomedical researchers across fields to understand the inter-disciplinary approaches which expanded available therapies for patients and additional research collaboration.ÿ This work expands on the primary literature on the state of the art of cell therapies and biomaterials to review the most widely used surgical therapies for the specific clinical scenarios. - Explores cellular and molecular processes of wound healing, scar formation, and dermal repair - Includes examples of animal models for wound healing and translation to the clinical world - Presents the current state of, and clinical opportunities for, extracellular matrices, natural biomaterials, synthetic biomaterials, biologic skin substitutes, and adult and fetal stem and skin cells for skin regenerative therapies and wound management - Discusses new innovative approaches for wound healing including skin bioprinting and directed cellular therapies

Dr. Albanna is currently the R&D Projects Lead and supervisor of the R&D department at COOK General BioTechnology, LLC, a COOK Medical company. Dr. Albanna was the team leader of skin Bioprinting clinical research programs at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) working on utilizing autologous and allogeneic skin and stem cells for developing dermal/epidermal skin substitutes. Dr. Albanna expedited the transition of multiple skin bioprinting projects from bench-top into clinics through development of preclinical models for wound healing and skin regeneration, protocols for large scale expansion of skin and stem cells for clinical use. Dr. Albanna has several years of expertise in product development of tissue-engineered products including skin wound healing products. He is author or the co-author of several patents and publications including book chapters and peer-reviewed journals in esteemed journals in the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine including two recent accepted book chapters on biomaterials for skin regeneration and acellular dermis matrices for skin regeneration and surgical reconstruction to be published in 2014 in Encyclopedia of Biomedical Polymers and Polymeric Biomaterials along with Dr. Holmes as a senior author.