Scar-free wound healing could be on its way

Rats, I was hoping this was a more general "fix" so that there would not be scarring on internal organs after surgery or other trauma.

No word on flexibility if the resulting tissue. Scars tend to be quite keratinicious and stiff. Still, an esthetic improvement is better than nothing, especially in facial injuries like the example picture.

Original publicity materials: https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2017/january...

Paper: https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aai8792

This is somewhat different from earlier lines of research into scarless healing in mammals, such as the work based on the biochemistry of MRL mice ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3806350/ ).

Interesting thing I've heard in Regeneritive Medicine podcast - burn victim skin stem cells are just too good at their job and render too much skin. Hence someone found process how to slow it and result in better looking skin.

Interesting point that they can already induce hair follicles to form. That would be newsworthy on its own, wouldn't it? (assuming it would work on male pattern baldness)