Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Each year in North America, more than half a million patients receive immediate medical care due to burn injuries. Fifty thousands of these patients need acute hospitalization related to these injuries. The gold-standard treatment for extensive burn injuries is using a healthy part of the patients' skin for covering the wounds area which is called skin grafting. Split thickness skin grafts can be "meshed" to allow them to be used to cover larger areas than would be otherwise possible. This process involves creating a large number of small cuts in the skin graft that allow the sheet to be expanded. Although this process is highly beneficial by allowing smaller skin graft donor sites to treat larger wounds, it requires more of the wound to heal secondarily (without the benefit of a direct skin graft). This results in slower healing and a poorer final outcome in terms of the scar. Specifically, the scar ultimately has a "cobble stone" or "fishnet" pattern. This is an indelible remainder to the patient of their injury, and also produces a poorer quality scar with less mobility and stretch. To address this issue, we propose the use of a novel powdered reconstituteable liquid skin substitute (MeshFill) to fill the splits of meshed grafts. MeshFill is a low-cost, simple chemical product to create an artificial skin composite that can fill a wound bed or skin void, such as in a meshed graft. Prior to potential clinical application, we will examine the outcome of this approach with meshed skin grafts on Red Duroc Pigs. Skin healing in pigs is remarkably similar to humans. If our hypothesis proves correct, the application of this strategy will significantly improve surgical wound care of millions of burn patients. Unlike many potential treatments in this area, the final product is going to be inexpensive and readily produced, which dramatically increases the potential benefit of this approach. The benefits of MeshFill for these patients is faster healing and reduced scar.