Bioactive scaffolds for skin replacement, regenerative medicine and wound healing

Drexel University
posted on 02/08/2010

Drexel’s biomedical engineers and physicians have developed a novel bioactive scafforld that can be used as an inexpensive, off-the-shelf skin substitute for regenerative medicine and wound healing applications.

Non-healing skin wounds inflict nearly 5 million Americans each year, and translate into multi-billion dollar healthcare costs with global wound care expenditures amounting to $13 to $15 billion annually. It is estimated that the US market for tissue-engineered skin replacement products for the treatment of traumatic skin and non-healing diabetic skin ulcers exceeds $500 million per year. Worldwide the number of potential users for such products would, conservatively estimated, exceed several hundred thousand patients each year, and open a multibillion $ market, provided that health care providers could have access to simple, yet effective products with extended shelf lives at an affordable price. Tissue engineering approaches using cell-based dermal, epidermal, or full-skin substitutes to treat acute burn wounds and chronic diabetic ulcers have shown clinical success; however, their limitations include long culture times, restricted availability and/or the risk of immune rejection of cell sources. Most of the existing engineered skin substitutes are either very expensive and/or have a limited shelf life. Hence, they are not suitable as “first-response treatment modalities”, e.g. for the treatment of traumatic injuries to the skin.

Drexel’s bioactive scaffolds utilize soy protein isolate, a common alimentary ”green-protein”, for generating a high-tech biomedical platform that: a) will circumvent current and emerging problems with animal-protein bases skin substitutes; and, b) meet the need to provide an affordable, readily available bioactive scaffold for wound healing.

Suggested Uses

- First line or emergency use wound dressing or skin substitute for acute, chronic or diabetic wounds

- Skin replacement applications

Advantages

- Bioactive material promoting wound healing

- Off-the-shelf, ready-to-use wound dressing

- Long shelf life, no special storage conditions

- Very low cost, 10x to 100x cheaper than other wound care products such as Dermagraft, Apligraf, Integra, EZ-Derm

- Made from abundant non-animal material

Innovation Details

Detailed Description

For more detailed description please open the attached non-confidential Executive summary.

File Number: 06-0669D

Disease: Dermatology

Other Information:

This technology is protected by pending US and international patent applications and is available for licensing from Drexel University. For more information please contact Alexey Melishchuk at Drexel’s Office for Technology Commercialization at 215-895-0304 or email at: am633@drexel.edu.

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