Great strides have been made in creating an artificial skin with both epidermal and dermal components. Apligraf is one of the most advanced organ constructs to date. The material is a bi-layered skin equivalent, with a keratinocyte sheet that covers a dermal layer formed from fibroblasts that have been cultured in a collagen matrix. Dermagraft is another engineered skin substitute that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and shows promise in treating diabetic ulcers. Dermagraft is a single-layered material made from fibroblasts embedded in a dissolvable mesh.
Oral mucosa is a much more forgiving tissue than skin when it comes to wound healing.
Mucosal cells removed from a patient's mouth and cultured in the laboratory could have applications for repairing surgical damage from periodontal treatment or large mucosal defects resulting from cancer surgery. Virtually every soft tissue in the body is a potential target for bioengineering and progress is occurring rapidly on many fronts. In the works is the first lab-grown cornea, made from corneal epithelial cells seeded into a polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel. The fibroblasts form the structural matrix of the valve and the endothelial cells form the surface coating. In a recent advance in this area, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology seeded a tubular polyglycolic acid scaffold with bovine smooth muscle cells and grew it for 8 weeks in a culture chamber called a bioreactor.