Center for Skin Graft Engineering (Skin Bank)

The Howard and Rosine Kaufman-Green Skin Graft Engineering Center in Sheba was established with the aim of providing a clinical response to cases where burns are extensive and there is a shortage of donor skin.

Our Center focuses on treating third-degree burns, which damage all layers of the skin, posing a life-threatening situation and hindering the skin's natural ability to regenerate. This type of burn requires an immediate graft of autogenous skin that can be taken from another unaffected area of the body. In scenarios involving extensive burns and limited donor areas, therapeutic alternatives like frozen allograft skin, synthetic skin substitutes, or cultured skin growth become necessary.

The Green Skin Laboratory is the first and only laboratory of its kind in Israel that enables growing skin in culture for the treatment of burns. Cultured Epidermal Autografts (CEA) technology utilizes the keratinocyte progenitor cells extracted from a skin biopsy from the patient to divide and regenerate in culture. Under optimal culture conditions, keratinocytes divide to form cell colonies that over time grow until they coalesce to form a compliant and stratified epithelial cell layer suitable for autologous transplantation, a common technique used in clinical management of burns and chronic wounds.

Future applications could involve treating skin diseases that affect skin integrity, such as Junctional Epidermolysis Bullosa. As such, our lab places special emphasis on future research and development of innovative approaches to treating burns.

The skin bank will be used for short-term preservation of donated skin for allograft treatment of fresh skin and long-term preservation of donor keratinocytes that will be grown in culture for use in allograft skin.

Establishing the centre is another breakthrough step that will allow us to provide optimal care and save lives in complex burn cases arriving from across the country to the national centre for burn treatment in Sheba.