Tissue Biology Research Unit

The Tissue Biology Research Unit is the basic science oriented research laboratory of the Department of Surgery of the University Children's Hospital Zurich. Our philosophy is that many unsolved clinical problems are best addressed if clinicians and basic scientists unite and agree upon a common mission that is fueled by a common spirit. The explicit intent of this joint venture-type research is to develop together innovative therapeutic approaches (in our setting this means: through "tissue engineering") in the laboratory to be then applied clinically.

A major focus of our work is the development of autologous dermo-epidermal skin substitutes that can be used clinically to cover skin defects of any origin in one single surgical intervention. To achieve that, we are creating cultured dermo-epidermal skin grafts that are pre-vascularized in vitro to allow for a rapid and long lasting connection to the patients vascular system after transplantation. As for the epidermal component, we aim at developing diagnostic tools (at the protein and nucleic acid level) to identify epithelial stem cells of human origin in cultured skin substitutes. In addition, we are about to reconstitute the stem cell niche in vitro, which will allow for the reliable maintenance of the skin epithelial stem cell compartment in culture.