Posts in category: Medical

Tissium, a Paris-based medical technology company founded on MIT research, has secured De Novo marketing authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its non-traumatic peripheral nerve repair platform. The clearance enables commercialization of its first product, which uses a flexible, biocompatible polymer that bonds to wet tissue when activated by blue light. In a recent clinical trial of 12 patients, all of whom completed follow-up, regained full flexion and extension of their injured digits, and reported no pain 12 months after surgery.

Researchers are advancing lab-grown skin substitutes that could reshape treatment for burns and chronic wounds. A comprehensive overview of this progress, published in Nature Outlook: Skin, highlights how multilayer grafts are moving closer to clinical use. In 2023, Anthony Atala at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, reported a printed three-layer graft that included pigment cells, vasculature, and hair follicles. In pigs, these grafts successfully merged with host tissue. “Why don’t we engineer skin that is full thickness, so you can actually use that as a permanent graft — just like you would a patient’s own graft?” Atala asks.