• Question: is it possible for skin to heal rappidly , like a superhero?????????????????

    Asked by anon-181236 to Jason on 1 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Jason Chu

      Jason Chu answered on 1 Jun 2018:

      To the extent of a superhero like Wolverine or Deadpool.
      Highly unlikely, but I guess not impossible.

      I’m hoping to understand how skin repair works so that we can help people that have problems in their wound healing process. In order to do this we look at the biological pathways involved in this.
      So, if we we’re to find an important pathway that we can target to improve skin repair. You could argue that one day we can make skin heal more rapidly than normal.
      However, there’s a major risk with this. If our skin cells multiple too quickly. And uncontrollably. That could lead to a skin cancer. So it’s all about finding that balance.

Comments

  • Photo: Damian

    Damian commented on :

    As surgeons, when we do operations on people, we see first hand how skin heals at different speeds. Clean incised wounds heal much faster than rough, disorganised wounds, or wounds that have dirt or infection.

    What seems to be even ore important is what part of the body they are on. For example, wounds on the face heal really quickly, compared to say the back.

    The most important thing is how healthy the person is overall, and especially their immune system. If you have diabetes, or malnutrition, or are a smoker, or if you have to take steroids or medicines that suppress the immune system (if you have had an organ transplant for example), then skin wounds can take much longer to heal.

    Certain awful infections never heal, and if there is a foreign body e.g. a bit of gravel in a wound, or a stitch – then sometimes those wounds never heal and have to be cut out.

  • Photo: joeyshepherd

    joeyshepherd commented on :

    Hi Koil. Jason’s work sounds really interesting, and some of our work is along similar lines – one thing we are trying to do is make skin heal faster – although we tend to work more with skin infections like Damian talked about. Not really answering your question but one thing we have found is that your skin is an amazing barrier to infection – in our lab if we just put bacteria on skin nothing happens. We have to wound the skin in some way, by burning it or cutting it, to get the bacteria in so they can cause an infection. Skin is already a bit of a superhero!