Grant: Proof of Principle Program - Phase I

Wound care is one of the largest and most diverse markets in health care amounting to roughly $16 billion and growing at just over 8% per year. The Advanced Wound Care segment is the fastest growing market segment and addresses complicated wounds such as burns and chronic wounds. Patients who suffer from burns and chronic wounds (i.e. diabetic ulcers) often require surgical intervention, which is costly and risks further complications. Advanced wound care currently offers sheet-like artificial skin and injectable materials that can be used to jump-start the repair process. Unfortunately, the downsides of these approaches are numerous, as sheet like artificial skin poorly integrates, and in many cases offer a poor profit model for manufacturers; whereas, injectable materials fail to offer the strength of an artificial skin sheet, and are lacking the architecture of a tissue. Moving toward an innovative solution to satisfy these and other unmet needs, we developed a reconstitutable Skin Substitute Powder that will form an artificial skin sheet once rehydrated and applied to the wound bed. Our hypothesis is that our novel skin substitute, when delivered as a kit, will finally provide a means for health care professionals to engineer patient skin at the bedside and customizing the tissue repair for the patient on site. Completion of this POP will enable us to transform our novel skin substitute into an advanced wound care product that will be (and already is) well received by stakeholders and companies in this healthcare market and ultimately improve treatment outcome in patients.