The Burns Unit at Concord Hospital, a specialist referral centre, is part of the NSW Statewide Severe Burn Injury Service servicing the entire state of New South Wales for adults with burn injuries and other skin loss conditions. The Unit is well equipped with purposely designed patient care facilities, surgical theatre, and a state-of-art clinical cell culture GMP clean room, laser treatment clinic and a burn research laboratory. Our multi-disciplinary clinical team that is renowned for providing world-class clinical care in treating severe burns.  

Our unit is affiliated with University of Sydney Medical School. We have a well-established research team to carry out clinical and laboratory research projects to solve the problems we come across in patient care. 

Our research team is committed to the development of cell therapies and engineered skin substitutes as alternatives for deep burn care. The research involves in generating various biological scaffolds using bio-degradable matrix proteins and synthetic polymers that are biologically compatible, safe and suitable for skin cells to attach and grow. The bio-scaffold could facilitate the repair and regeneration of the damaged dermal tissue and the engineering of living skin substitutes with skin structures comparable to normal human skin.

We are also involved in fundamental burn research including wound healing, wound infection, scarring and wound contraction, nutritional and hormonal regulation of burn wound healing. In addition to laboratory-based projects, our clinical research team carry out various research on important issues in burn and reconstructive surgery; burn wound care; management of burn wound scarring and contraction, dermal angiogenesis; cell therapies for skin regeneration; rehabilitation and allied health issues post severe burn injury, and burn epidemiology and prevention.

Burns and Reconstructive Surgery Laboratory
(ANZAC Research Institute)

The group researches all aspects of Burn Care and specialises in tissue engineering of 3-dimensional skin substitutes for severe burns patients. Cultured Epithelium Autografts (CEA) is a well-established technique to create large numbers of skin cell for resurfacing of wounds. Unfortunately, these cultured cells do not have the same physical properties as normal human skin cells as they are missing the interaction with deeper tissue layers.

Our laboratory is committed to improve the cultured skin autograft technology by developing three-dimensional dermal substitutes and skin equivalents for treating deep burn wounds. Using technologies including tissue culture, cell biology, molecular biology and cellular and tissue engineering, we have been trying to produce different biological scaffolds that are biologically compatible, safe and suitable for skin cells to attach and grow. The scaffold could be used for repairing the damaged dermal bed or for engineering autologous skin substitute with skin structures comparable to normal human skin, which includes epidermis, dermal components, pigment cells and microvascular vessels under laboratory conditions. The research and development of tissue-engineered scaffold, dermal and skin equivalents will benefit not only the burns patients but also the patients with other skin defects such as chronic, diabetic and pressure skin ulcers.