Background
Although cellulose has long been used as a wound care material – in cotton gauze bandages, for example – it is not bioabsorbable. It is not degraded biologically or chemically in the human body. Thus bandages must be removed from the still-healing wound. This often tears the wound open, even while requiring the attention of a trained health professional. Removal of wound care material may also leave patients at greater risk for infection.

Invention Description
The disclosed invention is a bioabsorbable nanodimensional cellulose tissue scaffold material for wound repair and tissue regeneration. The manufacturing process incorporates cellulose degrading enzymes into a cellulose material, which allows the material to degrade over time. This is ideal since cellulose degrades to glucose, an inert, natural material already present in the body. Thus when the scaffolding material degrades to glucose, the body completely absorbs it. Studies have shown that enzyme embedded cellulose materials almost completely degrade 90% of the material being converted to glucose and much of the remainder as oligosaccharides – this process can be improved with further optimization of the enzyme mixture.

File Number: 3266