Although the team's lab and others have demonstrated the capacity to use molecular affinities to control the rate of release of drugs, these observations have not been translated to commercial or clinical successes. The novelty of this work is that at the completion of the proposed research the concept of affinity-based delivery will be closer to commercial reality as it will address some of the barriers to customer acceptance, such as separating the delivery technology from the implanted device. This work will be transformative in assisting future researchers in tuning drug delivery rates to those much slower than currently available. Primarily this will be toward delivery of antibiotics, but the team is poised toward application in other delivery areas. The proposed research also has relevance to pharmaceutics and pharmacology, chemistry and biomaterials.
Every year there are about 21 million acute surgical wounds, 500,000 burns with 100,000 requiring hospitalization, 6 million chronic wounds and 1.5 million diabetic foot ulcers. In spite of the many advances in wound care products, the impact of infections and related complications just in burn patients result in 12,000 deaths and an $11billion impact upon the US healthcare system annually. The novel film of the team's drug delivery polymer will reduce wound infections and provide hospitals with an alternative that will lower costs and decrease patient suffering. In addition to directly addressing the significant problem of infections, the team's film CD solution will be able to multiplex other therapeutics such as growth factors and other critical molecules in a sustained tunable delivery system. Films incorporating therapeutics will have applications in orthopedics, cardiovascular and oral indications. Currently there are no similar products so film CD-therapeutics will be first in class.
