[Regenerative medicine for skin].

Tissue engineering is moving rapidly from fundamental research to commercial applications. The first product is an autologous cultured epidermal substitute. Other representative products are allogeneic cultured dermal substitute and allogeneic cultured skin substitute. Surgical closure with auto-skin grafting is the gold standard for treatment of victims with extensive deep skin defects. Therefore, the tissue engineers have to develop the cultured skin substitutes, taking into account the successful application of auto-skin grafting, Kuroyanagi developed an allogeneic cultured dermal substitute, which was composed of a 2-layered spongy matrix of hyaluronic acid and atelo-collagen containing fibroblasts. This product is able to release a number of biologically active substances that are necessary for wound healing. A multi-center clinical study on the use of this product has been performed at 30 hospitals across Japan as the Regenerating Medical Millennium Project of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.