Grant: Proof of Principle Program - Phase I

Serious burn injuries pose many challenges for patients and health care providers, including wound infections and death resulting from these infections. Although advances in surgery, and intensive care of burn injuries have resulted in improved survival, the ideal wound dressing is still lacking. While some dressings fight infection and others are easy to remove from the wound there are none that do both well. Current effective antimicrobial dressings are painful to remove, causing distress that leads to post injury depression and posttraumatic stress disorder. Delicate tissue is also damaged when sticky dressings are pulled off causing delayed wound healing. The increased time needed to remove dressings that are sticky also uses valuable nursing time and resources. We have created a technology to place a non-sticking agent on antimicrobial dressings while keeping the antimicrobial activity. Our technology has been successfully tested on one brand of silver based dressing called Acticoat. Our goal is to test this technology on a variety of other wound dressings. We propose a 4-step study in which lab and animal based models will be used to test various dressings treated with our technology for: stickiness, antibacterial properties, toxicity to human cells, and wound healing. Showing that this technology works on different dressings will make it highly marketable to other dressing companies and increase opportunities for licensing this technology. The advanced wound care market for antimicrobial dressings is an active and growing market valued at $7 billion dollars worldwide. This wound care market is large as wounds occur in all environments and across the entire healthcare continuum including hospitals and community-based care. The creation of a dressing that reduces infection, pain, and the amount of health care provider time needed for dressing changes would not only have direct impact on patient care, but have a tremendous cost saving on the healthcare system.