A project to culture human skin for grafting in cases of severe burns has been undertaken at the Deccan Medical College in association with the Owasi Medical Research Centre, Hyderabad, and the Central Leather Research Institute, Chennai. The project aims at culturing one sq metre of skin from one sq inch of the victims' skin. The process involves in vitro culture of epidermal cells known as keratinocytes. This has been achieved by cultivating the cells on a feeder layer of irradiated fibroblasts. The multiplication of cells takes three to four weeks. Researchers are working on reducing this period to about one week.
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