November 10, 2017.
A young child who suffered from a rare skin disease was able to benefit from an exceptional transplant: 80% of his skin could be reconstituted.
A very rare skin disease
A 7-year-old German boy suffered from a rare and serious disease: junctional epidermolysis bullosa. This pathology causes chronic wounds on the skin, the formation of blisters between the epidermis and the dermis and this can lead to the development of skin cancer. 40% of children affected by this disease die before adolescence. But this little patient was luckier.
He was admitted in June 2015 to the children’s hospital at the University of the Ruhr in Germany. He was first subjected to an antibiotic treatment, then to a skin transplant from his father. But these two attempts at healing came to nothing. So the doctors called in Michele de Luca, a specialist in the use of stem cells in skin reconstruction and director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine in Modena, Italy.
Genetically modified cells
The latter took cells from the child’s skin that were not affected by the disease. He then genetically modified these cells to allow the epidermis to adhere to the dermis., then he cultured them in vitro. Michele de Luca’s team then grafted this skin to the young boy. Two operations, carried out in October and November 2015, were necessary.
The transplant having taken, the doctor began to replace 80% of the young boy’s skin. Two years later, the doctors found that the child was cured. According to our colleagues in the review Nature which reveal this medical feat, the child had to be followed for eight months in intensive care but today he was able to leave the hospital and return to school like a healthy little boy. He wouldn’t even need to take painkillers anymore!
Marine Rondot
To find out more: The transplant: how to replace an organ?
