AsianScientist (Jul. 19, 2011) – Chronic wounds affect hundreds of thousands of Australians, particularly older Australians, diabetics and people in Indigenous communities.
Often, when such wounds do not respond to the conventional topical treatments, doctors resort to covering them up with skin grafts or tissue flaps. Despite medical treatment, such wounds are still at risk of infection and can become gangrenous, eventually requiring amputation of the limb if all else fails.
A new wound-healing liquid, VitroGro®, developed at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), has shown promise in reducing the need for skin grafts when treating chronic wounds. It is applied using a needleless syringe and is dribbled over the wound. The protein in the liquid is extremely sticky and so very quickly adheres to the wound bed, offering a revolutionary new treatment.
A joint clinical trial led by the Cardiff University Wound Healing Clinic in conjunction with the QUT Wound Clinic in Brisbane tested VitroGro® on 53 patients whose chronic venous ulcers had been refractory to treatment for an average of 37 months.
The team found 92 percent of the patients taking part in the trial were partially or completely healed in 12 weeks. The average reduction in wound size was 65 percent, with no adverse events related to VitroGro® reported.
“We’re very excited by these results as it’s a new formulation, which is going to be extremely cost effective to the consumer,” said Professor Zee Upton from QUT’s Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation who is also the technical founder and consulting Chief Scientific Officer for Tissue Therapies Limited – a biotechnology company developing VitroGro®.
“For conditions like venous ulcers where the biology of healing is aberrant, VitroGro® provides critical adhesion for cells by forming a scaffold they can attach to and migrate upon. It creates a favorable environment for healing and this is something that has been missing from conventional wound care,” he said.
The preliminary data confirms the results of earlier Australian and Canadian human trials by showing VitroGro® restarts or accelerates healing of chronic venous ulcers that don’t respond to expert care, reducing the ulcer size as well as improving wound characteristics and reducing pain.
“Patients have also reported that their pain has improved, which is important as these wounds are often quite painful and people in the trials have been living with them for years – in one case, 30 years,” Upton said.
“Nurses have also been impressed by the visible and consistent performance of VitroGro®, particularly the visible and quick improvement seen in challenging cases combined with ease of use and pain reduction,” he adds.
Upton said VitroGro® was biologically inspired and was developed to emulate the way nature repaired wounds. The product is slated for release in Australia and Europe in the second quarter of 2012.
Trials are also expected to commence in the United States early next year.
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Source: Queensland University of Technology.
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