Scientists from the Centre for Genomic Regulation and collaborators have developed a new approach to limiting the amount of collagen produced by hyperactive fibroblasts, which could lead to effective treatments for fibrotic diseases and scarring.
Wound healing is a highly specialized dynamic process for the repair of damaged/injured tissues through an intricate mechanism. Any failure in the normal wound healing process results in abnormal scar formation, and a chronic state which is more susceptible to infections. Researchers from Monash University in Australia and Osaka University in Japan have demonstrated that the removal of a specific subtype of sensory neurons containing the Nav1.8+ ion channel significantly impairs skin wound repair and muscle regeneration following injury.
Saturating bioactive glass with silver sustains the metal’s antimicrobial properties and reduces biofilm formation, researchers at the University of Birmingham, U.K., found. Their study, published in Biofilm, demonstrated that specific preparation, storage and application techniques minimize the transformation of silver ions to silver chloride that typically reduces silver’s healing properties over time.
Using direct current to stimulate a chronic wound can help it to heal up to three times faster, researchers from Chalmers Institute of Technology, Sweden, and the University of Freiburg, Germany, found. Working from a well-known hypothesis that the skin is electrostatic, the researchers engineered a microfluidic biochip on which skin cells were cultured. They then made tiny wounds in two cells. One was allowed to heal naturally while the other was stimulated with electricity.
Abeona Therapeutics Inc. is on the road to filing a BLA with the U.S. FDA after posting positive top-line phase III data in wound healing and also to the bank with a new $35 million private placement financing. The data for EB-101, an autologous cell therapy, came from a pivotal study of treating recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa, an ultra-rare connective tissue disorder. Results showed the study met its two co-primary endpoints in wound healing and for reducing pains in large, chronic wounds caused by the disorder.
Since its launch in the U.S. in April, Biolab Sciences Inc.’s Dermistat has facilitated the healing of 80 wounds using its unusual gel-graft formula. The product transforms a patient’s skin cells into a partial thickness skin graft in 48 hours and a full-thickness graft in five to seven days. The autologous graft material speeds recovery following surgery or burns and helps to resolve non-healing wounds.
Researchers at INSERM have gained new insights into the basic biology of mesenchymal stem cell function, and how platelets improved that function in an animal model of wound healing.
