Artificial skin, a synthetic equivalent to human skin, can dramatically increase the chance of survival of severely burned patients. The first synthetic skin was invented by John F. Burke, chief of Trauma Services at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Ioannis V. Yannas, chemistry professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Seeing so many burn victims during his career, Burke had long been seeking a replacement for human skin that would prevent infection and dehydration. Meanwhile, Ioannis Yannas had been studying collagen, a protein found in human skin. Teaming up during the 1970s, the two found that collagen fibers and a long sugar molecule (called a polymer) could be combined to form a porous material that resembled skin and, when placed on wounds of lab animals, seemed to encourage the growth of new skin cells around it. The pair then created a kind of artificial skin using polymers from...