Who is credited with the invention of 'spray on skin', which has been widely used by medical professionals to treat burn victims around the globe?

Fiona Melanie Wood, (born February 2, 1958, Hernsworth, Yorkshire, England), is the British-born Australian plastic surgeon who invented “spray-on skin” technology for use in treating burn victims.

She graduated from St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School in London in 1981 and she moved to Perth in 1987 after marrying surgeon Tony Keirath, a native of Western Australia.

She became Western Australia’s first female plastic surgeon, after earning her fellowship from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) in plastic and reconstructive surgery (1991).

In 1992, Wood became head of the burn unit at Royal Perth Hospital (RPH), which moved its facilities to Fiona Stanley Hospital in 2014.

From the early 1990s Wood focused her research on improving established techniques of skin repair.

Her spray-on skin repair technique involved taking a small patch of healthy skin from a burn victim and using it to grow new skin cells in a laboratory. The new cells were then sprayed onto the patient’s damaged skin.

With traditional skin grafts, 21 days were necessary to grow enough cells to cover extensive burns.

Using spray-on skin, Wood was able to lower that amount of time to just 5 days.

Wood patented her technique and in 1999 co-founded a company, ‘Clinical Cell Culture’, to release the technology worldwide.