Diabetes affects more than 40 million people in the United States, according to the American Diabetes Association. For many, the chronic condition means a lifetime of pain as worsening circulation leads to nonhealing ulcers in the extremities, especially the legs and feet.
Chronic inflammation, difficulty in forming nutrient-carrying capillaries, and overzealous immune cells that attack healing tissue all combine to make diabetic foot ulcers one of the most difficult wounds to treat. Thirty-one percent of affected patients will be forced to resort to amputation, according to a 2024 meta-analysis published in the International Wound Journal.
Treatments exist but suffer from numerous drawbacks. Natural materials often work better than synthetic for wound healing, encouraging the use of biological products taken from donors.
Today, the most common materials come from pigs or human cadaver skin that has been processed to remove cells. However, pig-derived products can cause immune rejections or sensitivity. Human donor tissues are limited and often come from elderly donors with lower regenerative capacity. Additionally, variability among donors can introduce inconsistencies and lead to poor mechanical matching with the patient’s tissue, which may slow healing or provoke the patient’s immune system to attack the structures intended to help them heal. These treatments can also result in scarring.
“When you have cells in your product, there will always be issues,” said Dr. Feng Zhao, a professor of biomedical engineering at Texas A&M University. “The shipment and storage can introduce all kinds of problems. Because the cells come from donors, the skin is older and the regenerative property is reduced. Other products take biological materials from animals, but there’s always a risk of pathogen transfer or immuno-rejection.”
Zhao is part of a team working on a potential solution: a novel wound dressing that uses materials created by human cells—without including the cells themselves. The researchers recently published their findings in Acta Biomaterialia.
“We use a human cell-derived biological material called interwoven extracellular matrix for this regeneration,” Zhao said. “If you produce these from human cells, there’s an unlimited source. When you use engineered cells, you have a more stable quality.”
Zhao—in collaboration with fellow biomedical engineering professors Drs. Staci Horn and Jason George, along with Ph.D. students Archita Sharma and Dhavan Sharma—has developed a method to guide laboratory-grown cells to build structures exactly like those found in human skin.
“We provide cells with a framework—like the foundation of a house,” Zhao said. “Then, they respond to that structure and build the house. If you just give them a flat surface, they grow randomly and don’t create the organized structure we need. By giving them an initial framework, we guide them to build the structure we are looking for.”
Once the structures are created, researchers can entirely remove the human cells that built them, eliminating the risk of biomechanical incompatibility or immune system response.
“We use detergents to wash them off completely. Then it’s just biological,” Zhao said. “Once the cells have built the structure, we kick them out. Then, we have this structure there to organize the cells in the body. It will eventually be remodeled and replaced by the native tissue. We just have the structure there to organize the cells of the body and let them repair the structure. Our material then gradually disappears and is replaced by the natural tissue.”
These human cells and the material they produce are currently cultured in lab dishes, which limits production and can lead to variability between batches. Zhao plans to scale up production using bioreactors capable of providing the foundation framework and the appropriate mechanical environment, guiding cells to build uniform structures. This approach will enable faster production and more consistent, standardized materials. https://news.engineering.tamu.edu/news/2026/04/16/novel-diabetic-wound-treatment-turns-cells-into-manufacturers/:~:text=Texas%20A%26M%20biomedical%20engineering%20researchers,to%20produce%20natural%20skin%20structures.&text=A%20microscope%20view%20of%20injured,researchers’%20interwoven%20extracellular%20matrix%20material.
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