L uis Garza, a physician-scientist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine for over a decade, noticed a common issue when treating people with

Sole Fibroblasts Injected into Thighs Help Develop a Thicker Skin

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2025-01-24 19:30:09

L uis Garza, a physician-scientist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine for over a decade, noticed a common issue when treating people with limb amputations at his clinic. They often had rashes and cuts at the amputation site where their skin could not withstand the high mechanical pressure of wearing prosthetics.1 The painful lacerations would deter patients from using their prosthetics, significantly affecting their quality of life.

“This sparked an interest to [find] a way to help people who have pressure at places that their body was not meant to have pressure,” said Garza.

Volar skin, found on the palms and soles of feet, is thicker than skin on the arms and legs and can withstand higher mechanical pressure.2 In recent research, Garza and colleagues showed that injecting fibroblasts from volunteers’ volar skin increased pressure-responsiveness of their non-volar skin that persisted for several months.3 The results, published in Science, demonstrate the therapeutic potential of volar fibroblasts to modify skin identity, suggesting an approach to prevent skin pressure-induced damage.

It is nice to see the study show that transplantation changes skin traits, said Ryan Driskell, a skin biologist at Washington State University, who was not associated with the study. “It doesn’t surprise me per se, because the theory was always there.”