Treatment of skin defects using suspensions of in vitro cultured keratinocytes.

The in vitro cultivation of keratinocytes and their application in the form of confluent sheets to cover various kinds of skin defects involves a number of problematical steps which could be improved by using single cell suspensions instead. Therefore we developed a method to apply keratinocytes suspended as single cells in a fibrin gel. By testing the feasibility of this method in different experimental animal models we found that it facilitates cultivation as well as application of the cells, moreover, this method allows a much more flexible use of the cells, i.e. it is easier to consider the clinical condition of the patient than by the conventional method.