I’m sure many of you have heard of genetic engineering, and especially CRISPR. If you haven’t, then read my other articles. Anyway, you may have heard of heart transplants. Lung transplants. Even brain transplants! But what happens when you need new skin?

A young boy named Hassan had a horrible disease that caused weak skin, which made it easy to get blisters. He needed nine feet of new skin and was dying. Hassan’s disease was called Junctional Epidermolysis Bullosa, and he is not the only one with it. Doctors used gene therapy to grow him new skin. That’s right. They grew him new skin! Now Hassan is perfectly free to live his life as he wishes, thanks to gene therapy.

How did they do this, you might ask? We don’t really know. There are many different ways to do this. For example, one young boy had the same disease. Doctors took away a small amount of his skin, and then modified it with genetic engineering. They then grew it and used it as a transplant. They could have done this, or many other things. All thanks to genetic engineering!

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/health/gene-therapy-skin-graft.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FGenetic%20Engineering&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=collection