Doctors have found a way to manipulate wounds to heal as regenerated skin rather than scar tissue, and in doing so may have also discovered a breakthrough in anti-ageing.

The method involves transforming the most common type of cells found in wounds into fat cells – previously thought to be impossible in humans.

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania began the work, which led to a large-scale study in connection with the Plikus Laboratory for Developmental and Regenerative Biology at the University of California, Irvine.

Fat cells called adipocytes are normally found in the skin, but they're lost when wounds heal as scars. The most common cells found in healing wounds are myofibroblasts, which were thought to only form a scar.

Scar tissue also does not have any hair follicles, which is another factor that gives it an abnormal appearance. Researchers used these characteristics as the basis for their work, changing the myofibroblasts into fat cells that do not cause scarring.

"Essentially, we can manipulate wound healing so that it leads to skin regeneration rather than scarring," said George Cotsarelis, MD, the chair of the Department of Dermatology and the Milton Bixler Hartzell Professor of Dermatology at Penn, and the principal investigator of the project. "The secret is to regenerate hair follicles first. After that, the fat will regenerate in response to the signals from those follicles."

While these findings have the potential to be revolutionary in the field of dermatology, the increase of fat cells in tissue can also be helpful for more than just wounds.

Adipocyte cells are also lost naturally due to the ageing process, especially in the face, which leads to permanent, deep wrinkles – something anti-ageing treatments can't fix in a cosmetically satisfactory way.

"Our findings can potentially move us toward a new strategy to regenerate adipocytes in wrinkled skin, which could lead us to brand new anti-ageing treatments," Cotsarelis said.