PolarityTE is a biotech company creating technology to help the human body regenerate skin tissue over wounds. Here’s our PolarityTE review.
What Is PolarityTE?
PolarityTE is a Salt Lake City, Utah-based company that plans to heal burn wounds using a unique skin regeneration technology.
The company made headlines this past week after company co-founder, CEO, and Chief Scientific Officer Denver Lough rang the closing bell on Monday, August 14 at the NASDAQ stock exchange.
PolarityTE operates out of the University of Utah’s Research Park. Their flagship product is SkinTE, a technology that helps regenerate a burn victim’s healthy skin tissue, allowing it to be used to repair severe burns with minimal scarring. As a testament to the power of SkinTE, the regenerated skin will even generate hair follicles.
PolarityTE will begin testing its burn treatment on humans later this year.
In the future, PolarityTE plans to extend its technology to include bone, muscle, fascia, cartilage, and nerve damage, among other areas.
Lough, by the way, was previously a senior plastic surgery resident at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.
How Does SkinTE Work?
SkinTE aims to regenerate full thickness, fully functional skin in humans. The process, according to the official website, “should allow a patient’s own skin to be fully expanded from a small biopsy, and then regenerate all layers (epidermis & dermis), hair and appendages – which has never been done before.”
After adding SkinTE to burn tissue, it leads to progressive regenerative healing of full-thickness functionally-polarized skin.
In other words, SkinTE is the best technology we have today for repairing burned skin to its pre-burn state.
Images posted on the SkinTE website show control wounds, including the effect that SkinTE has as the wound heals.
Here’s the basic process involved in SkinTE:
- A biopsy is used to acquire the patient’s skin
- Researchers imprint cells in a laboratory in a 3D system using their platform technology
- During polarization, a direct natural layer of skin is formed, including hair and appendages
- The skin is applied to the burn victim’s skin, after which natural healing can occur
As the official website explains, “Our SkinTE construct is designed to harness the power of natural tissue polarity to establish a robust micro-environment for regeneration.”
Why haven’t other researchers done this in the past? Skin regeneration has always been difficult because the skin is so much more than just keratinocytes. It’s the largest organ in the human body, and it requires intricate interactions and polarity to function. When the body recognizes its own skin, it allows for hair follicle regeneration and other “natural” processes.
PolarityTE claims to have demonstrated regenerative capacity for their skin across a wide spectrum of scaffolds, including readily available and off-the-shelf marketed products. That’s why Wall Street has taken note (among other reasons).
About PolarityTE
PolarityTE is a Salt Lake City, Utah-based company led by Chief Executive Officer Denver Lough (who previously worked as a senior plastic surgery resident at Johns Hopkins), Chief Operating Officer Edward Swanson, Chief Financial Officer John Stetson, and Chief Medical Officer Michael Neumeister (chairman of the surgery department and an endowed chair in plastic surgery at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine).
The company is listed under the NASDAQ symbol COOL. So far, SkinTE is the company’s flagship product.
PolarityTE Review Summary
PolarityTE is a unique biotech company that has created a powerful skin regeneration system. The system begins human testing later this year, and could change the way the medical community treats burn victims.
The technology is called SkinTE. It works by growing a patient’s natural skin, then applying that skin over the burn area. The technology is significant because it’s the world’s first skin regeneration technology capable of growing hair follicles and appendages.
Stay tuned for more information about PolarityTE as the company continues to progress with its technological development.
