Research on the development of genetically engineered xenogenic porcine skin and its application in the treatment of burn wounds

Abstract

In the recent years, the shortage of allo-skin sources has resulted in great challenges for salvage of patients with large area severe burns. Although being similar to human skin in construction and function, the clinical application of xenogenic porcine skin in burn wound management is limited due to factors including immuno-rejection, porcine endogenous retroviruses infection, etc. With the development of gene editing technology, especially the emerge of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein-9 system, multiple target genes could be possibly edited at the same time, which will bring broad prospect for the application of xenogenic porcine skin in the treatment of burn wounds. The paper mainly discusses the development, the existed barrier, the strategies of gene modification/editing, and the applications and research of xenogenic porcine skin xenografts in the clinical treatment of burn wound.