Results of using experimental treatment to treat burn victim's skin is 'remarkable,' doctor says

[00:00:00]Western University student Caitlyn Jeffrey suffered severe burns to her face in a house fire back in December.

[00:00:06]Well, here's what she looks like today.

[00:00:09]A team of doctors in Hamilton used a world first experimental treatment on Caitlyn's burns and the results are incredible. The treatment uses exosomes to to speed the healing process without the need for skin graft. Joining us today to tell us about the treatment is Caitlyn's surgeon, vice president of research and innovation at Hamilton Health Sciences, Dr. Mark Yaffe. Welcome to the program. Such an honor to have you here and to walk us through This is remarkable. It's like looking at a miracle. I I thought that there must be some sort of filter on these results.

[00:00:40]Just incredible. I should tell everybody at home, we have some photos of Caitlyn throughout her treatment process. They do show her severe burns. These are images that Caitlyn has approved yourself as well and they help to demonstrate how successful this treatment was. So, Dr. Yaffe, we're going to put up those pictures and can you walk us through what treatment looked like at each stage?

[00:01:00]>> Uh good morning Anne Marie and thank you for having us or having me and reflecting what what we have done. So, you see here Caitlyn's burn coming in very early after burn and you see this profound depth of the burn to her face and her neck. And again, indicating to us that a wonderful, beautiful young woman, 18 years of age, will have a very high likelihood of being having scars for the rest of her life.

[00:01:24]Again, you see the progression here. Can see again, appreciate the depth of the burn 5 days in.

[00:01:30]So, between day 5 and now day 20 is when we started the treatment. We took her to the operating theater. We we did what we normally had to do and then we started and realized that the burns are so deep that she would have needed grafting or she would have healed with profound scarring.

[00:01:46]And so, what we decided or we we just did not take this for for granted that we had that an 18-year-old having the rest of her life ahead of her is suffering from debilitating scars and people look at your face. That's the first thing people look at. And we just did not accept that Caitlyn will have scars to her face. So, that's where we came up with this novel treatment to hopefully, at that time, we we we kind of like expected that there may be beneficial results. But again, we did in the operating room theater, we did the this experimental treatment and saw this remarkable recovery of Caitlyn.

[00:02:20]>> Can you explain for us again, doctor, how the exosomes work to get the results that, you know, we were showing?

[00:02:26]>> So, these exosomes I call fat bubbles or these fat particles. Uh they they have been increasingly recognized of having important signaling function in your body. And a lot of cells produce almost all the cells produce exosomes. And what they do, and we we did some research.

[00:02:41]So, to be to be fair, we did work before on exosomes since about 2018-19 uh in in lab science and in um in in in research. And so, we saw the effect that exosomes have a signal to induce regeneration.

[00:02:56]So, what they do is they make the cells go to survive, to recovery, to regeneration. So, inducing a healing process within your body.

[00:03:04]Um so, not causing any graft. So, that was again the hope that the exosomes would induce her face to heal. And you can see on her neck. The neck was so deeply burned, but even with the exosome there, we got it to heal. And uh subsequently, now we have to obviously improve Caitlyn's neck uh with a significant scarring. But again, the face healed just remarkably well in a in record time of so speed.

[00:03:27]>> What was Caitlyn's reaction as she watched this process?

[00:03:30]>> Um she was very uh when you're 18 and you have this catastrophic event, you're impacted. And um you know, obviously she reacted like a burn patient. She's like, "I can't believe I don't want to live like this. This is terrible." And uh when we talked about this experimental treatment, she obviously has to agree and the parents. And we provided some background, some information, and we learned and we agreed all of them, let's give it a let's give it a try. And I think that she was and still is very excited that I mean you look at her face and she's wearing makeup even if there's no makeup, her skin is beautiful. So her face instead of having any scars healed completely with no scars and and the skin is just remarkable. So I think looking back she I think she's very much looking forward to not having scars to her face. She's obviously working through the process of the injury but I'm hoping we can be be able were able to give her a good quality of life.

[00:04:23]>> Dr. Yashki, just remind us without this exosome treatment, what might the results have looked like or what would have the options been for Kaylin?

[00:04:30]>> I I personally when we were in the operating theater and had my colleagues and we all saw the depths of the burns.

[00:04:36]So she would have normally required a grafting and that's even the best surgeon can do skin grafts and they can have excellent results but you have scars in your face. So she would have the next scars would have been in her face for the rest of her life and that is just something that again we I personally did not want for Kaylin as this wonderful young 18-year-old person.

[00:04:56]So she would have had scars all over her face.

[00:04:59]>> Dr. Mark Yashki, Vice President of Research and Innovation at Hamilton Health Sciences, the Director of the Burn Center at Hamilton General Hospital, congratulations to you and to your team to Kaylin and her family and thank you again for coming on to share with us this remarkable progress being made.

[00:05:14]>> Thank you very much. Have a good day.

[00:05:16]>> You too.

[00:05:17]Still ahead after the break.