Cell therapy of burns

Severe burns remain a life threatening local and general inflammatory disease with often heavy sequelae, despite remarkable progress in their treatment in the last three decades. Cultured epidermal autografts, the first and still up-to-date cell therapy of burns, played a key role in that progress, and their drawbacks should be reduced with cultured dermal-epidermal substitutes. This review focuses on what could be the next major breakthrough in cell therapy of burns: mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs). After summarizing current knowledge, including our own clinical experience, about MSCs in the pioneer field of cell therapy in radiation-induced burns, we discuss the strong rationale supporting the potential interest of MSCs in the treatment of thermal burns, including limited but promising pre-clinical and clinical data in wound healing and other acute inflammatory diseases. © 2012 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved