In a first, a team of Australian scientists has grown the world's first fully functioning lab-made human skin with its own blood supply. The advance may pave the way for better treatment of skin diseases, burns, and grafts. 

The team from the University of Queensland used stem cells to create a replica of the human skin, which had blood vessels, capillaries, hair follicles, nerves, tissue layers, and immune cells.

"This is the most life-like skin model that's been developed anywhere in the world and will allow us to study diseases and test treatments more accurately," said lead researcher Abbas Shafiee, a tissue engineering and regenerative medicine scientist from UQ's Frazer Institute.