Over 6 million people in the United States are afflicted by chronic ulcers and this number is expected to grow. Wound healing is impaired in these patients, who are often inflicted with other diseases (i.e., diabetes, venous disease, or arterial disease), receiving anti-inflammatory steroid treatment, or receiving chemo- or radiotherapy for cancer. Chronic ulcers can negatively affect patient quality of life and productivity and are a substantial financial burden to the health care system. Patients typically require extended periods of hospitalization and may require over 26 weeks for full recovery. Treatment of diabetic ulcers and related amputations in the U.S. totaled over $10 billion in 2011. Current treatments of non-infected ulcers are costly and have demonstrated mixed results. Most importantly, these treatments do not actively prevent infection, which can often complicate healing and affect long-term stable wound resolution. In the current proposal, we seek to manipulate a unique bioinspired redox chemistry found in mussel adhesive proteins to create a novel, multifunctional nanocomposite adhesive that can potentially promote wound healing while minimizing infection. There are three main objectives to this proposal. Objective 1: characterize the effect of adhesive composition on adhesive performance. Objective 2: demonstrate the adhesive?s ability in promoting healing and prevent infection in culture. Objective 3: verify candidate adhesives? ability to promote dermal wound healing in a diabetic mouse model. Successful completion of the proposed work will lead to a follow-on project aimed at evaluating the adhesive?s antimicrobial properties and its ability in treating animals with infected wounds.
Nearly a quarter of diabetic patients develop a foot ulcer, which negatively affects the patients? quality of life and productivity and is a substantial financial burden to the health care system. It is estimated that 12% of these individuals require lower extremity amputation. Current treatment options are costly, demonstrated mixed results and do not actively prevent infection. Current proposal evaluates a novel multifunctional bioadhesive?s ability to simultaneously promote wound healing and prevent infection, though the manipulation of a unique biomimetic redox chemistry.
