IT’S still a long way from the replicants in Blade Runner, but artificial skin containing sweat glands has been produced for the first time – and tested in mice. The hope is that, unlike conventional skin substitutes, the new skin will allow patients with large grafts to sweat to keep their bodies cool.
“This system promises to restore normal sweating activity,” says Xiaobing Fu of the Burns Institute of the General Hospital of the People’s Liberation Army in Beijing, China. Whether that promise has been fulfilled remains to be seen.
To produce the grafts, Fu and colleagues seeded beds of collagen…
