The broader impact/commercial potential of this technology is to advance the performance of the common bandage with low-cost production of a bandage that actively facilitates wound healing. The typical bandage wound dressing provides physical protection, but does not actively participate in wound healing. Additives that might actively facilitate wound healing can add prohibitive cost to an inexpensive device. Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), are sulfated polysaccharides that are ubiquitously present in the extracellular matrix of mammals. GAGs have been shown to facilitate wound healing, but because of the high cost of animal extraction, they are not used in low cost wound healing applications. The proposed technology utilizes sulfated cellulose as low cost GAG-mimics. The low cost of these mimics allows them to be used in bandages that will reduce healing time and reduce scaring. These GAG-mimics may also be useful in reducing the costs of more complex devices such as dermal regenerations, constructs for burn wounds, and dressings for decubitus ulcers, and diabetic wounds.
This I-CORPS project is based on results of research designed to investigate the use of glycosaminoglycan (GAG) mimics in the development of tissue engineering scaffolds as extracellular matrix (ECM) mimics for cartilage regeneration. GAGs are present in nearly every tissue in the body, and they play an important role in stabilizing important cell signaling proteins and presenting those signal molecules to cell receptors. Sulfated cellulose based GAG mimics were identified based on the similarity in molecular structure between the native GAGs and the sulfated cellulose. It was demonstrated that the biological activity of sulfated cellulose mimicked the biological activity of native GAGs.
