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Biomaterials Research Update: New
Wound Healing Materials at Purdue
Researchers at Purdue University’s Weldon School of
Biomedical Engineering are in the process of developing scaffold-like materials
that promises to speed up the recovery process for patients. The wound healing
material has a fast curing time once inside the body.
Alyssa Panitch, an associate professor at Purdue University,
heads the research team that discovered the liquid wound healing material, after
numerous years of clinical testing at the Weldon School of Biomedical
Engineering. The material is being touted as a modern medicine breakthrough and
promises to create an expedited process for burn victims and those that require
the fastest recovery time possible.
The research is showing that the liquid material can be
injected directly into a wound site and will solidify and fill any space needed.
Once inside the body, the liquid spreads out and forms an almost immediate
bonding for repairs of such wound treatments as mending damaged bones, spinal
cord fusions, arterial reattachment, and other tissue rebuilding procedures.
According to Alyssa Panitch, the associate professor on the
research team, “because the material starts out as a thickened liquid, it
rapidly can be injected into almost any part of the human anatomy and quickly
fills in the gaps between severely damaged and or missing tissues.” The liquid
forms a three-dimensional matrix and after the wounded area has had time to
reattach to either bone or tissue the material disintegrates and is removed from
the body as normal waste.
The advantages of this research stem from the options that
are made available through the open-access wound healing material. Purdue
researchers define the term open-access for those materials that can have other
medicines mixed in with the injection. The gel can be loaded up with antibiotics
or pain medication and can be directly applied to the nerve endings on the
wounded site.
With so many options now made available with the wound
healing material the research team is very excited as clinical trials are
becoming more successful and more engaging through the scientific and medical
community. The delivery of necessary drugs and other wound healing properties
directly into the interior site of the treatment area has the medical community
excited and anxious to see how far this new research actually goes.
The material is being tested for the improvement of
“drug-eluting stents,” that are metallic scaffolds, which are inserted into the
arteries to allow the blood to flow more easily, and undeterred. The problem
that the cardiovascular surgeons who operate on heart patients and utilize stent
procedures have is that at times blood clots can form and not be discovered
until a heart attack occurs. The new material could save lives, as the
elimination of clotting could be a distinct advantage in many of the open-heart
surgery procedures.
The research was detailed in a paper presented Monday, March
29, 2011, during the American Chemical Society‘s 233rd National Meeting &
Exposition held in Chicago, Illinois. It was met with overwhelming interest and
research partnerships with Purdue and Arizona State University (Alyssa Panitch,
Associate Professor Alma Mater).
The future research might certainly include the strengthening
of the material as this will be a very important part of broken bone and bone
surgery wound healing. Research with polymers has concluded that the use of
these strengthening materials, when applied with the delivery of the gel, has
been successful. Researchers at Purdue have shown how the gels are strengthened
by the use of polymers that have more “functional groups.” These functional
groups are attached to other molecules which then make the matrix much stronger.
Read and learn more about Alyssa Panitch’s new wound healing
materials research in this Purdue University news article . The research paper
that was presented to the American Chemical Society’s 233rd National Meeting &
Exposition can be read on the site in this article.
http://biomedikal.in/2011/07/biomaterials-research-update-new-wound-healing-materials-at-purdue/.
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