Key points from article :
Cutaneous ulcers can lead to serious infections or amputations.
Typically treated by surgically transplanting existing skin to cover the wound.
Isolating and growing skin stem cells from patient is time consuming.
Salk Institute approach converts naturally present cells into new skin cells.
Basal keratinocytes are precursors to many different types of skin cells.
But large, severe wounds no longer have any basal keratinocytes.
Newly generated cells functioned like healthy skin in mice.
The study was published in the Nature journal.
