Biotech company RenovaCare has created a “SkinGun” that can spray stem cells onto your body for rapid healing. Find out everything you need to know about the technology today.
What is SkinGun?
SkinGun is a handheld medical device that could spray stem cells on your skin for rapid healing.
SkinGun is made by a biotech company named RenovaCare. The product is not yet available in the United States, and SkinGun, like other RenovaCare products, is currently under development.
Although it’s been used to treat and heal patients, it’s still considered an experimental technology.
SkinGun has been making headlines thanks to a recent National Geographic video where SkinGun was used to spray a State Trooper’s own stem cells onto his skin to heal severe burns.
The product is also known as a “skin cell gun” or “skin gun”. It’s been theorized as a way to heal problems like chronic wounds, pigmentation disorders, and cosmetic applications.
As researchers learn more about the technology, they believe it can also be used to regrow major human organs like the heart, kidneys, and lungs – not just the skin.
Who is RenovaCare?
RenovaCare is a biotech company dedicated to developing innovative stem cell therapies.
The company is specifically focusing on developing first-of-their-kind autologous (self-donated) stem cell therapies for the regeneration of human organs – like the skin.
You can get in touch with RenovaCare by toll-free phone at 1-888-398-0202.
RenovaCare acquired the technology behind SkinGun back in 2013, and announced plans to continue developing the technology for commercial distribution.
How Does SkinGun Work?
Before using SkinGun, researchers first need to take stem cells from a postage stamp-sized sample of the patient’s healthy skin.
In order to isolate these stem cells from the surrounding skin, RenovaCare needs to use an enzymatic tissue processing protocol.
The resulting cell suspension is then transferred to a sterile syringe, and then the cell suspension is inserted into the skin gun.
SkinGun then begins to uniformly distribute stem cells directly into the wounded area. These new stem cells begin to migrate, multiply, and differentiate, creating new skin tissue in just a few days.
That’s how SkinGun heals major skin disorders, chronic wounds, severe burns, and other devastating conditions. Within days, the skin is well on the path to recovery.
The entire procedure takes about 2 hours – including the initial collection of stem cells to the initial healing of the skin.
The skin will gradually heal itself. The speed of the recovery depends on the patient. Some patients experience “full re-epithelization” in just 4 days. Within a few months, most patients have fully regained color and texture in their skin.
History of SkinGun
Obviously, SkinGun sounds like something out of a futuristic sci-fi movie. So where did this stem cell gun come from, and why are we just hearing about it now?
Early experimental versions of the device were initially developed in Berlin, Germany. Researchers were initially trying to use stem cells to regrow major human organs – like the liver – but were unsuccessful.
That’s when researchers started taking a different approach: they began experimenting with re-growing skin – which is just another organ in the body. Researchers found that the skin was a special case.
Skin wounds were in accessible environments (you don’t have to cut someone open to access a skin wound), which made it easy to test the new technology.
Over time, researchers refined the technology using stem cell isolation techniques. These techniques maximized the availability of stem cells that would survive the transplantation process (not all stem cells survive the transfer).
Researchers eventually found that the best way to transfer stem cells with minimal loss was to use a gun. Hence, the name “skin gun” was born.
The skin gun, unlike a traditional gun, gently delivers the cell suspension of stem cells without exposing those cells to harsh forces – like the forces seen with ordinary spray devices.
Over the past few years, stem skin gun procedures have been performed around the world – including on a test group of 19 patients in Berlin in 2007 as well as on several patients at UPMC Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh in 2011.
Today, skin gun treatments are particularly popular on patients who have experienced second degree burns.
This is thought to be the safest and best time to use skin gun treatment. However, researchers believe that the procedure can be equally as effective with other types of skin issues – like different types of injuries or skin diseases.
The Pros and Cons of SkinGun Treatment
SkinGun is a revolutionary medical procedure that has vastly improved the quality of life of patients with skin disorders and other skin issues.
Here are some of the pros, cons, side effects, and benefits of SkinGun treatment:
Pros
- The average healing time for patients with second degree burns, without SkinGun treatment, is 3 to 4 weeks; with SkinGun treatment, healing time is reduced to a matter of days
- Less risky than traditional skin grafting (which comes with a high risk of infection)
- SkinGun treatment is less prone to infection because the wound is exposed for a shorter period of time, shortening the potential infection time
- Skin cell application process is quick and straightforward; the doctor just applies an aqueous spray, while the electronic SkinGun device uniformly distributes the stem cells across the area
- The procedure only requires a thin layer of the patient’s healthy skin, so it’s a painless process
- The regenerated skin looks more natural; after all, it’s the patient’s own stem cells that are being used to create new skin
- Skin cells become fully functional within days of the procedure, including fully functional dermis, epidermis, and blood vessels beneath the skin
- Little scarring
Cons
- There are major limitations to SkinGun technology, which is why it’s not being used everywhere for every skin diseases; it doesn’t work on deep burns that go through bone and muscle, for example (specifically below the dermis)
- It’s still a relatively small sample size, as only a few dozen patients around the world have been treated with SkinGun technology (for comparison, 50,000 have been treated with a skin grafting substitute technology called Dermagraft)
- The long-term stability of newly-generated skin is unknown
Ultimately, SkinGun is a revolutionary technology that is currently being used to heal skin disorders around the world.
The potential for this technology is enormous: as researchers learn more about stem cells and their application, they can begin to extend the technology to recreating vital organs like the heart, kidneys, and lungs – something that has the potential to change human health as we know it.
