ITW Dr. Daniela Marino - Co-Founder CEO CUTISS: A Major Breakthrough for Severely Burned Patients
Channel: E² by Ari Massoudi
Date: 04/03/2022

ITW Dr. Daniela Marino - Co-Founder CEO CUTISS: A Major Breakthrough for Severely Burned Patients

Problem

Skin is our larger tissue/organ with the function to protect us against all kind of external World treat. It’s a an extraordinary system but very fragile at same time. 

Every year over 11 millions people,  half of which are kids, all around the World are victims of fire and are burned severely enough to require urgent medical care and permanent attention. Every 3 seconds, someone around the world is the victim of severely burns. In case of skin severe burn injury, the patient needs a lot of skin and rapidly to avoid infection.

Every year over 300 000 people die from fires and the consequence of severe burns.

During all their life, survivors will suffer from dramatic physical, psychological and social consequences. 

Current medical offer

Only 50 years ago, a victim was burned over 40%, he/she were condemned to die. Hopefully, due to the progress of skin grafts, now expert specialized medical staff can save people with burns up to 90-95%. 

Remarkable differences in burn outcomes can be observed between high-income and low/middle-income countries. The level of expertise of the medical staff specialized in the care of severely burned patients and the specific requirements of specialized hospitals or centres explains why low/middle-income countries can not offer the best care to their victims.

A skin graft is a section of epidermis and dermis harvested from an unburned part of the body and reaffixed to a site where the skin has been removed or damaged. Skin grafts lack a blood supply of their own and must rely on the recipient wound bed for nutrients. If the burn has destroyed the vascular system, the graft could die and there is an infection risk. 
When contemplating a skin graft in wound reconstruction, the donor site must also be considered. Skin graft is often more painful than the recipient wound due to exposed dermal nerve endings ad it could require several operations for large burns. This operations are very difficult for the patients.
If the severe burned concerns more than 90% of the victim skin, the skin graft is nearly impossible due to the lake of un-burned zones to take off for the grafts. 

For those affected nothing is like before. Indeed, even if skin grafts save lives, unfortunately, there are far way from being a perfect solution. Patients suffer from chronic pain and have to undergo regular surgeries. Deep wounds heal badly and develop into large, permanent, disfiguring scars that need follow-up surgeries. The patient’s skin will be covered with large scars inducing not only psychological and social damage (studies show that people with significant visible scars are seen as less likable and less intelligent, which makes it difficult for burn victims to find jobs) but also physical disabilities. Indeed, the large scar zones are rigid and limit the movement otherwise are painful. 

CUTISS Revolution

From just a small piece of healthy skin from an un-burned zone, the size of a postage stamp, the skin cells are harvested, expanded and then combined in an hydrogel to produce a living skin - called DenovoSkin - ready to be transported to the operating room where the surgeon can transplant it on the injured areas. 

All the process is fully automated and performed by a machine - called DenovoCast - invented by CUTISS !  

DenovoSkin is of course not rejected as it is from the patient’s own cells. DenovoSskin will dramatically improve patient quality of life by minimizing scarring, reducing the number of follow-up surgeries and hospitalization time. 

The ambition of CUTISS is democratize to all hospitals and clinics the care of severely burned patients, not only in high income countries but also in low/middle income ones where the need is HUGE!

The market for CUTISS is $2 billion for severe burns and over $5 billion for burn scar reconstruction – this in Europe and the United States alone.

In this new episode of Epistémê Entrepreneur, discover the amazing story of a real Wonder Wonder: Dr. Daniela Marino. 
Discover how Dr. Marino with her devoted team have built CUTISS from scratch a biotech/med tech company that will change the face of medicine.  

Dr. Marino holds a master in Biotechnology from the University of Milan, then she joined the ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and then the University in Zurich where she followed her doctoral and post-doctoral researchers in stem cells and skin biology.
Founded in 2017, CUTISS is a spin-off of the University of Zurich, a revolutionary deep tech company backed by more than 15 years of Academic research and by 50 millions euros from private investors and public organizations.

CUTISS is now expanding in France with the opening of CUTISS Innovation, a R&D centre based in Sophia-Antipolis.

https://cutiss.swiss/ 
Daniela Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniela-marino-3bb35a26/
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