Medical Device Daily

Prof. Meital Zilberman of TAU's Department of Biomedical Engineering has developed a new wound dressing based on fibers she engineered fibers that can be loaded with drugs like antibiotics to speed up the healing process, and then dissolve when they've done their job. A study published in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Applied Biomaterials demonstrates that, after only two days, this dressing can eradicate infection-causing bacteria.

The new wound dressing, which AFTAU says does not have a formal name yet, is designed to mimic skin and the way it protects the body. It combines positive mechanical and physical properties with what medical researchers call "a desired release profile of antibiotics," the organization noted.

According to Zilberman, the new dressing protects the wound until it is no longer needed, then it melts away.

"We've developed the first wound dressing that both releases antibiotic drugs and biodegrades in a controlled manner," Zilberman said. "It solves current mechanical and physical limitations in wound-dressing techniques and gives physicians a new and more effective platform for treating burns and bedsores."

Noting the need for such wound dressings, Zilberman told Medical Device Daily in an email response to questions that 75% of the people who die from burns die because of the infection, not the trauma.

"We developed this wound dressing as a part of a large platform of drug-eluting fibers that can be used for many applications. This is just one application," Zilberman said.

But the technology is not as simple as it sounds.

Skin, Zilberman says, serves a number of vastly different purposes. "Wound dressings must maintain a certain level of moisture while acting as a shield," she says. "Like skin, they must also enable fluids from the wound to leave the infected tissue at a certain rate. It can't be too fast or too slow. If too fast, the wound will dry out and it won't heal properly. If too slow, there's a real risk of increased contamination."

Zilberman explained to MDD that after applying the product on the wound it is filled with fluids from the wound and the antibiotic molecules are released in a rate that decreases with time large quantities during the first day in order to prevent initial infection due to contamination, and smaller quantities afterwards. Then it dissolves with time to non-toxic end products, she said.

Because the dressing dissolves, removal is not painful for the patient, Zilberman said. She also noted that it can be used for any type of wound, including burns and pressure sores.

"It can be predesigned for the specific application. Its porosity and physical properties such as water uptake can be predesigned so as to fit the specific type of wound," Zilberman said.

Unlike oral antibiotics, locally applied antibiotics can target and kill harmful bacteria before they enter the body to cause further infection, sepsis, or death, according to the AFTAU.

The new TAU dressing inhibits bacterial growth and is biodegradable, which helps doctors avoid constant wound cleaning and redressing, allowing the body to do the work on its own, AFTAU noted.

"When administered at the wound, a doctor can give relatively high but local doses of antibiotics, avoiding any toxicity issues that arise when the same amount of antibiotic passes through the body," said Zilberman, who worked on this research with Jonathan Elsner, her PhD student.

Zilberman said she has been developing the wound-dressing product for three years and will start animal studies soon. So far, according to the AFTAU, the dressing has passed physical and mechanical tests in vitro and in bacterial inhibition tests in the laboratory. She is also seeking a strategic partner to co-develop the research and take it to the commercial stage, the organization said.

Amanda Pedersen, 229-471-4212;

amanda.pedersen@ahcmedia.com