Tissue engineering and tissue healing have a common complication - it's difficult to build new blood vessels throughout the rebuilt skin, but vasculature is required to keep the skin alive. This is especially problematic for victims of severe burns. A new customised sugary gel substance can work wonders to re-grow skin and the associated blood vessels, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
The method involves a specially designed hydrogel, a water-based polymer. This one is made of mostly water with dissolved dextran, a type of sugar, and polyethlyene glycol (a common substance found in everything from antifreeze to laxatives).
We have seen hydrogels used before in creating artificial skin - last winter, Rice University researchers used a PEG hydrogel, doped with human growth factors and platelets, to induce the growth of artificial vessels. But this new one is interesting because the researchers didn't add anything - no growth factors or anything else. This particular hydrogel's physical structure apparently rendered that unnecessary. The researchers aren't even certain how this happened.