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Adhesive dressings protect wounds from bacteria, damage and dirt. (And sometimes drawings of super hip sports.)
But they do not contribute much to the healing process.
And the more sophisticated dressings are often complex to manufacture, expensive and difficult to personalize.
Enter Active Adhesive Dressings (ADA).
Harvard researchers and McGill universities have developed a scalable approach to accelerate wound healing, based on heat-sensitive, mechanically active, expandable, robust, highly adhesive, and antimicrobial hydrogels.
In simple terms, DAAs can close wounds and prevent bacterial growth faster and more efficiently than other options.
An article describing the new method was published in the journal Progress of science.
"This technology could be used not only for skin lesions, but also for chronic wounds such as diabetic ulcers and pressure ulcers, for drug delivery and as components of therapies based on soft robotics." David Co, co-author of the university and professor at Harvard Mooney said in a statement.
DAAs are inspired by embryos, the skin of which can heal completely without formation of scar tissue – a lost ability once the fetus develops after a certain age.
The active adhesive bandage could be used to close wounds on internal tissues such as the heart, administer medications and operate in therapies based on soft robotics (via the Wyss Institute of Harvard University)
To mimic protein fibers that bring the edges of embryonic wounds closer together, such as closing a drawstring bag, researchers have developed resistant adhesive hydrogels.
The resulting hybrid system contracts when it reaches body temperature, allowing it to accelerate healing of open lacerations on the skin.
"The AAD has been linked to the pork skin with more than 10 times the adhesive strength of a bandage and prevented the bacteria from multiplying," said in a statement the project leader , Benjamin Freedman, postdoctoral fellow in the Mooney Lab. "So, this technology is already significantly better than the most commonly used wound protection products, even before considering its wound closure properties."
By testing their active adhesive bandages on mouse skin patches, the researchers found that DAAs reduced wound size by about 45% compared to the almost total absence of changes in non-skin samples. treated and that closed wounds were faster than other treatments.
In addition, it caused neither inflammation nor immune reaction, suggesting that the technology is probably safe for use in and on living tissue.
In the future, Mooney & Co. hopes to learn more about the impact of DAAs on the biological process of wound healing, as well as their performance in a variety of weather conditions, as body temperature may vary by location.
"We hope to pursue further preclinical studies to demonstrate the potential of the DAA as a medical product and then work towards commercialization," Freedman said.
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