Fiona Wood is a British-born Australian plastic surgeon best known for pioneering “spray-on skin,” a technology that uses a patient’s own cells to treat severe burns with far less scarring than traditional skin grafts. Her work gained worldwide attention after the 2002 Bali bombings, when she led the medical team treating the majority of burn victims flown to Australia. In 2005, she was named Australian of the Year.
From Yorkshire to Perth
Wood was born in Yorkshire, England, and began her medical career at St Thomas Hospital in London in 1981, training under the plastic surgeon Bryan Mayou. Working at Great Ormond Street Hospital sparked her interest in scarring and how it could be reduced, which led her to the Queen Victoria Hospital’s burns unit. In 1987, she and her husband Keith immigrated to Perth, Western Australia, where she completed her surgical training and eventually became the head of the burns unit at Royal Perth Hospital.
How Spray-On Skin Works
The idea behind spray-on skin started in the late 1980s with a simple goal: do more with less. Traditional burn treatment requires harvesting large sheets of a patient’s healthy skin and grafting them onto the wound. Wood began experimenting with taking leftover scraps of skin from the operating room, breaking them down into individual cells, and spraying that cell suspension directly onto burn sites.
Through the 1990s, working at the Western Australia Skin Culture Laboratory in Perth, she refined the process. The first commercial version, called CellSpray, was a laboratory-cultured product approved in Australia in 2001 and Europe in 2004. But it required sending the skin sample to a lab and waiting for cells to grow, which cost valuable time for critically burned patients.
Wood pushed the technology toward something that could be done right at the patient’s bedside. The result was RECELL, a portable device that lets surgeons prepare a cell suspension during the operation itself. Here’s the basic process: a thin skin sample as small as a postage stamp is placed inside the device, where an enzyme breaks down the bonds holding the cells together over about 15 to 20 minutes. The surgeon then scrapes the loosened cells free, collects them into a suspension, and sprays them onto the wound. A single piece of skin roughly the size of a small coin (about 6 square centimeters) produces enough cells to cover an area 80 times larger, around 480 square centimeters. That ratio is what makes the technology so valuable for patients with extensive burns, where healthy donor skin is scarce.
The Bali Bombings
On October 12, 2002, terrorist bombs detonated in two nightclubs on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing 202 people and severely burning many more. Twenty-eight survivors were airlifted to Perth, where Wood’s burns unit took the lead. She oversaw the treatment of more burn victims from the attack than any other clinician in Australia, applying her spray-on skin technique to patients with catastrophic injuries. Of the 28 who arrived, 25 survived. The three deaths stayed with her.
The Bali response catapulted Wood into public view. Before 2002, her work was known primarily within the burns surgery community. Afterward, she became one of the most recognized medical figures in Australia, credited with both saving lives in a national crisis and advancing a technology that could change burn care globally.
Recognition and Awards
In 2005, Wood was named Australian of the Year, with the award citation highlighting both her response to the Bali bombings and her pioneering spray-on skin technique. She holds the Order of Australia (AO) and has received honorary doctorates from multiple universities. Within the medical world, she is recognized as one of the leading burns surgeons of her generation.
Where the Technology Stands Now
RECELL received U.S. FDA approval in September 2018, more than a decade after it became available in Europe and Australia. As of early 2024, it is approved for treating burns and full-thickness skin defects, including wounds left after skin cancer removal, surgical excision, or traumatic injuries like degloving. It can be used on its own for partial-thickness burns in adults, or combined with traditional mesh grafting for deeper, full-thickness burns in both adults and children.
Wood continues to practice and research in Perth. Her foundation, the Fiona Wood Foundation, is pursuing a $15 million fundraising campaign to establish a Centre for Burns Research Innovation and Translation, with Wood as its inaugural chair. The foundation’s stated aim is “scarless healing in mind and body,” reflecting a broader ambition that goes beyond closing wounds to address the psychological trauma and long-term quality of life that burn survivors face.