Abstract
Full-thickness burn wounds pose significant problems, demanding specialised therapies to avoid complications and promote recovery. Eschar tissue, which forms in response to severe burns, contains viable fibroblasts, which migrate from the surrounding tissue in response to burn injury and exhibit a myofibroblast phenotype. The goal of this study was to characterise eschar-derived fibroblasts and examine their use for engineered in vitro full skin equivalents in comparison to normal dermal fibroblasts, which were harvested from non-injured skin. Microarray analysis indicated that eschar fibroblasts differ from dermal fibroblasts in various biological processes including inflammation, extracellular matrix formation, cell migration and differentiation. Skin equivalents with eschar fibroblasts showed similarities to those generated using normal dermal fibroblasts in terms of epidermis and dermis formation. However, in contrast to dermal fibroblast-based full skin equivalents, eschar fibroblast-based equivalents exhibited macroscopic contractile behaviour. In addition, eschar fibroblasts-based equivalents demonstrated higher alpha-smooth muscle actin expression on mRNA and protein levels. In conclusion, our findings suggest that eschar fibroblasts-based full skin equivalents hold promise as a platform to study burn wound environments as eschar fibroblasts are clinically more relevant fibroblasts and able to mimic certain aspects of the challenging wound environment in vitro.