Wood, Fiona

▪ 2006

 On Jan. 25, 2005, British-born Australian plastic surgeon Fiona Wood was honoured as Australian of the Year at a ceremony in Canberra. Prime Minister John Howard presented the award to Wood, a 47-year-old mother of six who had earned an international reputation for her work in developing “spray-on-skin” technology for use in treating burn victims. Her technique was considered a significant advancement in skin repair, helping to reduce scarring in patients with extensive burns and speed their rate of recovery. In 2002 Wood, who served as head of the burns unit at Royal Perth Hospital (RPH), found herself the focus of media attention following the deadly Bali (Indon.) bombings in October of that year. A number of the bombing survivors were evacuated to RPH, where Wood led a team that was credited with saving the lives of 28 of those patients, some of whom had suffered burns over more than 90% of their bodies.

      Wood was born in 1958 in a mining village in Yorkshire county, Eng. Athletic as a youth, she had originally dreamed of becoming an Olympic sprinter before eventually setting her sights on a medical career. She graduated from St. Thomas's Hospital Medical School in London in 1981 and worked for a time at a British hospital. She moved to Perth in 1987 after marrying surgeon Tony Keirath, a native of Western Australia. She became Western Australia's first—and, to date, only—female plastic surgeon. In addition to her position as head of the burns unit at RPH, she also served as a clinical professor at the School of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of Western Australia and directed the McComb Research Foundation.

      From the early 1990s Woods focused her research on improving established techniques of skin repair. Her spray-on-skin technique involved taking a small patch of healthy skin from a burn victim and using that 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 had been needed to grow enough cells to cover extensive burns. Using spray-on skin, Wood was able to lower that amount of time to just five days.

      Wood patented her spray-on-skin technique and in 1993 cofounded a company, Clinical Cell Culture, to release the technology worldwide. The company went public in 2002, with much of the money it generated being used to fund further research. Wood's goals were to “continuously improve burn care” and one day achieve “scarless, woundless healing.”

Sherman Hollar

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