Principal Investigator(s):
Anita Shukla
Assistant Professor of Engineering
Assistant Professor of Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology and Biotechnology
Brown University
Providence, RI
Brief Description:
Bacterial infection is a very common complication in all classes of wounds. Although all wounds are at risk of infection, burns seem to carry a particular risk of infection. These infections affect approximately 100,000 patients each year in the US along. Left untreated, sepsis from infected wounds has a mortality rate of 50%. Suitably, standard practice is to use a preventative treatment of broad-spectrum antibiotics. This is not without consequence, however, as this practice contributes to the growing concern of antibiotic resistance; both a public health issue as well as one facing the immediate patient.
Furthermore, exposure to systemic antibiotics leads to toxicity in unaffected tissues. Local, topical antibiotic solutions carry with them their own drawbacks - the most common agent for this purpose, silver sulfadiazine, is highly toxic to keratinocytes and fibroblasts, two cell types that are crucial for healing. Other classes of drug that have potential as an alternative have significantly higher minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs), and thus require a novel drug delivery system that can meet this requirement.
Researchers at Brown University have developed a hydrogel delivery system using FDA-approved methods with readily tunable mechanical and drug release properties for a wide variety of drug types and wound configurations.
Information:
U.S. patent application 14/942,435 is pending.
