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The Key to a Life-Saving Biomedical Innovation Discovered Inside a “Mistake”: An Inspiring Case Study

By Enora Rogers, P.E., C.R.E.  

Until the mid-1970s, severe burns over half the body meant a death sentence for most victims. The search for a “fix” has transformed burn treatment and saved thousands of lives worldwide. The discovery of “artificial skin”, or what is now recognized as the first synthetic organ,  was the result of a long collaboration between I.V. Yannas, MIT Mechanical Engineering Professor, and Dr. John Burke, a surgeon and head of Boston’s Shriners Burn Institute (SBI). Early in his career at MIT, Prof. Yannas received an invitation from Dr. Burke to tour the SBI facilities.  

Putting Artificial Skin to Work

Prof. Yannas saw many of the patients were children. The only available treatment often involved multiple skin grafts and was acutely painful. Some patients lacked enough skin for all the grafts required. Dr. Burke hoped they could work together to develop a “sophisticated bandage,” a sterile biomaterial, that encouraged faster-wound healing. Faster-closing wounds would reduce infection while retaining moisture in the damaged tissue.

His visit to the burn center changed the course of Prof. Yannas’ research—infusing it a sense of urgency to reduce the misery he’d witnessed that day. He returned to the lab, assembled a team, and began synthesizing polymers from different chemical families: plastics, rubbers, textile fibers. Each attempt ended in failure. In frustration, he turned to collagen, hoping for faster results. To his disappointment, rather than speeding up wound healing, the collagen-treated wounds actually took longer to close. Some researchers might have been tempted to give up or try yet another material. Not Prof. Yannis. Instead, he examined the failed collagen test minutely. That’s when he realized what initially appeared as a failure was a stunning success. The wounds did close more slowly, did not produce scar tissue during the healing process. I had the good fortune to play a small role in this research during my undergraduate study. I extracted collagen, prepared cross-linking formulations, then analyzed the resulting “skin structures.” As a budding scientist, I will never forget this experience. Prof. Yannas’ story beautifully illustrates the possibilities that emerge from collaborations among physicians, engineers, and scientists working together to save lives and improve the quality of our lives.
Attempting What Others Imagine Impossible

Beyond what I learned as a researcher, Prof. Yannas inspired me as a product development engineer, to be passionate in my work to refine innovative concepts into functional products. Today, interdisciplinary approaches to biomedical problems have become much more common. His work demonstrates a level of scientific rigor that serves as a model for future biomaterials research. In 2015, Prof. Yannas was named to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, an organization of about 500 members whose ranks include Benjamin Franklin, Louis Pasteur, Nikola Tesla, and Robert Moog. To me, Prof. Yannas will always be an inspiration: to work with passion, to persevere, to attempt what others may imagine impossible, and to closely examine what appear to be mistakes. I highly recommend the above video of Prof. Yannas and his journey to anyone looking for inspiration in the face of extreme challenges. To me, he is unforgettable.

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