In india, over 1,000,000 people suffer from moderate to severe burns every year and the problem is likely to persist. a large section of patients succumb to burns due to high cost of currently existing skin substitutes. skin substitutes are very important in case of massive burns, where autografts do not provide adequate skin cover. they reduce the risk of infection, slow healing and risk of creation of additional donor site wounds, equivalent to second degree burns, thus further increasing the affected total body surface area. the development of autologous artificial skin substitute can thus help us to overcome the problem as they offer immediate lesion coverage. to address these major concerns, we propose a method of using a perfusion reactor for developing autologous dermal skin substitutes (ads). briefly the project consists of two different innovations; first is the fabrication of economic biodegradable starch-based polymeric scaffolds, which can be employed to support 3-d cell culture for development of ads. second is to design and fabricate a perfusion bioreactor which can be used to develop ads at commercial scale. overall, the project involves fabrication of starch-based scaffolds using freeze drying and their characterization with respect to porosity, water retention and mechanical strength. thereafter, the scaffolds were seeded with human dermal fibroblasts from skin surgical waste and evaluated for cell-viability and proliferation. further, a perfusion reactor (diameter – 3.4 cm) under the process of fabrication for developing in vitro ads by culturing isolated dermal cells onto the scaffold. the final objective of the project will include pre-clinical studies for the developed graft through conducting wound healing studies and histological and/or immune-histochemical analyses in rats. an ideal dermal substitute should have the ability to resist infection, ability to withstand wound hypoxia and should be cost-effective, easy to fabricate, store and use, should trigger no immunogenic response. additionally, it should provide support to the cells during the process of wound-healing. various other polymer-related properties such as mechanical strength, degradation rate, cell attachment and proliferation etc are also important factors, which require consideration while developing an ideal dermal skin substitute. starch has been chosen as a suitable biomaterial for scaffold development due to its non-toxicity, bioresorbability and wound-healing properties. moreover, it is a natural, abundant, inexpensive and water-soluble biopolymer, which makes it a favourable biomaterial for developing an economically viable scaffold. perfusion bioreactor systems have been found to play an important role in tissue engineering. the system offers better culture conditions as compared to static culture. typically, static media does not provide optimal cell growth and thus deters the cell’s ability to migrate into the scaffold, because of mass transfer constraints. this results in formation of a shell of cells on the exterior of the scaffold, instead of a desired uniform distribution. perfusion systems constantly replenish fresh media with the use of chambers or columns that house the scaffold constructs. the constant replenishment of the media, results in enhanced nutrient delivery to the cells, thus increasing cell viability and migration across the scaffold. for clinical applications, perfusion bioreactors can be advantageous in terms of ease of handling, low contamination risk and scalability as well.