Bulletin Summer‧Autumn 1991

by the Sun Microsystems plant in Mountain View, California. The equipment has been installed at the Open Systems Laboratory in the Department o f Computer Science, and is now part o f the Chinese University Engineering Computer Network, which can be accessed by workstations and personal com­ puters anywhere in Hong Kong using the UN IX operating system. This donation w ill be used to study UN IX - based distributed computing environments and related problems. * The University recently received a donation o f HK$1 m illion from the local Lions Clubs to conduct research into kidney diseases and disorders o f the urinary system. Prof. Arthur K. C. L i, associate dean o f the Faculty o f Medicine, represented the University to receive the donation on 31st August. The money w ill be used to set up an endowment fund, and interest income w ill finance various kidney research projects undertaken by the Department o f Medicine and the Department o f Surgery. The two departments w ill study factors leading to the formation o f kidney stones, the reasons for kidney diseases in different age groups, and treatment methods. M a jo r Breakthrough in the Treatment o f Burns A fte r three years o f intensive research, the University's Department of Surgery succeeded in culturing human epidermis of good quality in suffi­ cient quantity for use in the treatment of severe scalds and bums. Skin destruction resulting from scalds and bums can be fatal because it can lead to serious infections and the loss o f body fluids. When the burned area is small, doctors normally cover it w ith skin harvested from other parts o f the patient's body. But i f the burned area is extensive, it has to be covered tem­ porarily by skin from a cadaver, an option not yet available in Hong Kong because o f the lack o f donors. The Department o f Surgery has therefore actively engaged itself in research on cultured human epidermis as a skin substitute. A few months ago, a patient with bums over 45 per cent of the body surface area was treated in the Prince o f Wales Hospital. To stabilize his condition, doctors used fresh pig skin to temporarily cover the wound. In the meantime, cultures o f epidermal cells were propagated from small pieces o f 'pa rtia l- thickness' skin harvested from the patient's body. In about fou r weeks' time, such sheets o f human epidermal cells expanded more than 200 times in size and were then transplanted back to the patient, together w ith autogenous skin grafts, to cover the wounds permanently. That was the first time the tech­ nique had been successfully applied in Hong Kong to treat patients with severe and extensive bums. The Department of Surgery w ill continue to direct its research efforts to the making o f durable human composite skin grafts consisting of cultured human epidermis and collagen dermis for temporary or permanent coverage o f burn wounds. H u m a n epiderm al cells successfully cultured. NEWS 17