Tag Archives: wound-healing

Fish skin for wound healing

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A Feb. 11, 2015 news item on Nanowerk features Chinese research on tilapia fish skin and possible applications for wound healing (Note: A link has been removed),

With a low price tag and mild flavor, tilapia has become a staple dinnertime fish for many Americans. Now it could have another use: helping to heal our wounds. In the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (“Development of Biomimetic Tilapia Collagen Nanofibers for Skin Regeneration through Inducing Keratinocytes Differentiation and Collagen Synthesis of Dermal Fibroblasts”), scientists have shown that a protein found in this fish can promote skin repair in rats without an immune reaction, suggesting possible future use for human patients.

A Feb. 11, 2015 American Chemical Society (ACS) news release, which originated the news item, provides a few more details about the work,

Jiao Sun, Xiumei Mo and colleagues explain that applying collagen — a major structural protein in animals — to wounds can help encourage skin to heal faster.  But when the protein dressing comes from mammals such as cows and pigs, it has the potential to transmit conditions such as foot-and-mouth disease. Searching for an alternative source of collagen, scientists recently turned to the ocean. Sun’s team wanted to test fish collagen’s potential as a more benign wound treatment.

The researchers developed nanofibers from tilapia collagen and used them to cover skin wounds on rats. The rats with the nanofiber dressing healed faster than those without it. In addition, lab tests on cells suggested that the fish collagen was not likely to cause an immune reaction. The researchers conclude that it could be a good candidate to develop for clinical use.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Development of Biomimetic Tilapia Collagen Nanofibers for Skin Regeneration through Inducing Keratinocytes Differentiation and Collagen Synthesis of Dermal Fibroblasts by Tian Zhou, Nanping Wang, Yang Xue, Tingting Ding, Xin Liu, Xiumei Mo, and Jiao Sun. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 2015, 7 (5), pp 3253–3262 DOI: 10.1021/am507990m Publication Date (Web): January 19, 2015

Copyright © 2015 American Chemical Society

This article is behind a paywall.

Wonders of curcumin: wound healing; wonders of aromatic-turmerone: stem cells

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Both curcumin and turmerone are constituents of turmeric which has been long lauded for its healing properties. Michael Berger has written a Nanowerk Spotlight article featuring curcumin and some recent work on burn wound healing. Meanwhile, a ScienceDaily news item details information about a team of researchers focused on tumerone as a means for regenerating brain stem cells.

Curcumin and burn wounds

In a Sept. 22, 2014 Nanowerk Spotlight article Michael Berger sums up the curcumin research effort (referencing some of this previous articles on the topic) in light of a new research paper about burn wound healing (Note: Links have been removed),

Despite significant progress in medical treatments of severe burn wounds, infection and subsequent sepsis persist as frequent causes of morbidity and mortality for burn victims. This is due not only to the extensive compromise of the protective barrier against microbial invasion, but also as a result of growing pathogen resistance to therapeutic options.

…

… Dr Adam Friedman, Assistant Professor of Dermatology and Director of Dermatologic research at the Montefiore-Albert Einstein College of Medicine, tells Nanowerk. “For me, this gap fuels innovation, serving as the inspiration for my research with broad-spectrum, multi-mechanistic antimicrobial nanomaterials.”

In new work, Friedman and a team of researchers from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Oregon State University have explored the use of curcumin nanoparticles for the treatment of infected burn wounds, an application that resulted in reduced bacterial load and enhancing wound healing.

It certainly seems promising as per the article abstract,

Curcumin-encapsulated nanoparticles as innovative antimicrobial and wound healing agent by Aimee E. Krausz, Brandon L. Adler, Vitor Cabral, Mahantesh Navati, Jessica Doerner, Rabab Charafeddine, Dinesh Chandra, Hongying Liang, Leslie Gunther, Alicea Clendaniel, Stacey Harper, Joel M. Friedman, Joshua D. Nosanchuk, & Adam J. Friedman. Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine (article in press) published online 19 September 2014.http://www.nanomedjournal.com/article/S1549-9634%2814%2900527-9/abstract Uncorrected Proof

Burn wounds are often complicated by bacterial infection, contributing to morbidity and mortality. Agents commonly used to treat burn wound infection are limited by toxicity, incomplete microbial coverage, inadequate penetration, and rising resistance. Curcumin is a naturally derived substance with innate antimicrobial and wound healing properties. Acting by multiple mechanisms, curcumin is less likely than current antibiotics to select for resistant bacteria.

Curcumin’s poor aqueous solubility and rapid degradation profile hinder usage; nanoparticle encapsulation overcomes this pitfall and enables extended topical delivery of curcumin.

In this study, we synthesized and characterized curcumin nanoparticles (curc-np), which inhibited in vitro growth of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa in dose-dependent fashion, and inhibited MRSA growth and enhanced wound healing in an in vivo murine wound model. Curc-np may represent a novel topical antimicrobial and wound healing adjuvant for infected burn wounds and other cutaneous injuries.

Two things: This paper is behind a paywall and note the use of the term ‘in vivo’ which means they have tested on animals such as rats and mice for example, but not humans. Nonetheless, it seems a promising avenue for further exploration.

Interestingly, there was an attempt in 1995 to patent turmeric for use in wound healing as per my Dec. 26, 2011 posting which featured then current research on turmeric,

There has already been one court case regarding a curcumin patent,

Recently, turmeric came into the global limelight when the controversial patent “Use of Turmeric in Wound Healing” was awarded, in 1995, to the University of Mississippi Medical Center, USA. Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) aggressively contested this award of the patent. It was argued by them that turmeric has been an integral part of the traditional Indian medicinal system over several centuries, and therefore, is deemed to be ‘prior art’, hence is in the public domain. Subsequently, after protracted technical/legal battle USPTO decreed that turmeric is an Indian discovery and revoked the patent.

One last bit about curcumin, my April 22, 2014 posting featured work in Iran using curcumin for cancer-healing.

Tumerone

This excerpt from a Sept. 25, 2014, news item in ScienceDaily represents the first time that tumerone has been mentioned here,

A bioactive compound found in turmeric promotes stem cell proliferation and differentiation in the brain, reveals new research published today in the open access journal Stem Cell Research & Therapy. The findings suggest aromatic turmerone could be a future drug candidate for treating neurological disorders, such as stroke and Alzheimer’s disease.

A Sept. 25, 2014 news release on EurekAlert provides more information,

The study looked at the effects of aromatic (ar-) turmerone on endogenous neutral stem cells (NSC), which are stem cells found within adult brains. NSC differentiate into neurons, and play an important role in self-repair and recovery of brain function in neurodegenerative diseases. Previous studies of ar-turmerone have shown that the compound can block activation of microglia cells. When activated, these cells cause neuroinflammation, which is associated with different neurological disorders. However, ar-turmerone’s impact on the brain’s capacity to self-repair was unknown.

Researchers from the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine in Jülich, Germany, studied the effects of ar-turmerone on NSC proliferation and differentiation both in vitro and in vivo. Rat fetal NSC were cultured and grown in six different concentrations of ar-turmerone over a 72 hour period. At certain concentrations, ar-turmerone was shown to increase NSC proliferation by up to 80%, without having any impact on cell death. The cell differentiation process also accelerated in ar-turmerone-treated cells compared to untreated control cells.

To test the effects of ar-turmerone on NSC in vivo, the researchers injected adult rats with ar-turmerone. Using PET imaging and a tracer to detect proliferating cells, they found that the subventricular zone (SVZ) was wider, and the hippocampus expanded, in the brains of rats injected with ar-turmerone than in control animals. The SVZ and hippocampus are the two sites in adult mammalian brains where neurogenesis, the growth of neurons, is known to occur.

Lead author of the study, Adele Rueger, said: “While several substances have been described to promote stem cell proliferation in the brain, fewer drugs additionally promote the differentiation of stem cells into neurons, which constitutes a major goal in regenerative medicine. Our findings on aromatic turmerone take us one step closer to achieving this goal.”

Ar-turmerone is the lesser-studied of two major bioactive compounds found in turmeric. The other compound is curcumin, which is well known for its anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Aromatic-turmerone induces neural stem cell proliferation in vitro and in vivo by Joerg Hucklenbroich, Rebecca Klein, Bernd Neumaier, Rudolf Graf, Gereon Rudolf Fink, Michael Schroeter, and Maria Adele Rueger. Stem Cell Research & Therapy 2014, 5:100  doi:10.1186/scrt500

This is an open access paper.

Make your carbon atoms stand taller to improve electronic devices

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Scientists from Ireland ((Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork [UCC]) and Singapore (National University of Singapore [NUS]) have jointly published a paper about how they achieved a ten-fold increase in the switching efficiency of electronic devices by changing one carbon atom. From the Jan. 21, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily,

These devices could provide new ways to combat overheating in mobile phones and laptops, and could also aid in electrical stimulation of tissue repair for wound healing.

The breakthrough creation of molecular devices with highly controllable electrical properties will appear in the February [2013] issue of Nature Nanotechnology. Dr. Damien Thompson at the Tyndall National Institute, UCC and a team of researchers at the National University of Singapore led by Prof. Chris Nijhuis designed and created the devices, which are based on molecules acting as electrical valves, or diode rectifiers.

Dr. Thompson explains, “These molecules are very useful because they allow current to flow through them when switched ON and block current flow when switched OFF. The results of the study show that simply adding one extra carbon is sufficient to improve the device performance by more than a factor of ten. We are following up lots of new ideas based on these results, and we hope ultimately to create a range of new components for electronic devices.” Dr. Thompson’s atom-level computer simulations showed how molecules with an odd number of carbon atoms stand straighter than molecules with an even number of carbon atoms. This allows them to pack together more closely. Tightly-packed assemblies of these molecules were formed on metal electrode surfaces by the Nijhuis group in Singapore and were found to be remarkably free of defects. These high quality devices can suppress leakage currents and so operate efficiently and reliably. The device can be cleanly switched on and off purely on the basis of the charge and shape of the molecules, just like in the biological nanomachines that regulate photosynthesis, cell division and tissue growth.

The Jan. ??, 2013 University College Cork news release, which originated the news item, provides more details,

The combined experiments and simulations show for the first time that minute improvements in molecule orientation and packing trigger changes in van der Waals forces that are sufficiently large to dramatically improve the performance of electronic devices. Dr. Thompson explains: “These van der Waals forces are the weakest of all intermolecular forces and only become significant when summed over large areas. Hence, up until now, the majority of research into ultra-small devices has used stronger “pi-pi” interactions to stick molecules together, and has ignored the much weaker, but ubiquitous, van der Waals interactions. The present study shows how van der Waals effects, which are present in every conceivable molecular scale device, can be tuned to optimise the performance of the device.”

The devices are based on molecules that act as diodes by allowing current to pass through them when operated at forward bias and blocking current when the bias is reversed. Molecular rectifiers were first proposed back in 1974, and advances in scientific computing have allowed molecular‐level design to be used over the past decade to develop new organic materials that provide better electrical responses. However, the relative importance of the interactions between the molecules, the nature of the molecule-metal contact and the influence of environmental effects have been questioned. This new research demonstrates that dramatic improvements in device performance may be achieved by controlling the van der Waals forces that pack the molecules together. Simply changing the number of carbon atoms by one provides significantly more stable and more reproducible devices that exhibit an order of magnitude improvement in ON/OFF ratio. The research findings demonstrate the feasibility of boosting device performances by creating tighter seals between molecules.

Here a citation and a link to the paper,

The role of van der Waals forces in the performance of molecular diodes by Nisachol Nerngchamnong, Li Yuan, Dong-Chen Qi, Jiang Li, Damien Thompson, & Christian A. Nijhuis. Nature Nanotechnology (2013) doi:10.1038/nnano.2012.238 Advance online publication: Jan. 6, 2013.

This paper is behind a paywall.

Norwegians weigh in with research into wood nanocellulose healing application

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It’s not just the Norwegians but they certainly seem to be leading the way on the NanoHeal project. Here’s a little more about the intricacies of healing wounds and why wood nanocellulose is being considered for wound healing, from the Aug. 23, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

Wound healing is a complicated process consisting of several different phases and a delicate interaction between different kinds of cells, signal factors and connective tissue substance. If the wound healing does not function optimally, this can result in chronic wounds, cicatrisation or contractures. By having an optimal wound dressing such negative effects can be reduced. A modern wound dressing should be able to provide a barrier against infection, control fluid loss, reduce the pain during the treatment, create and maintain a moist environment in the wound, enable introduction of medicines into the wound, be able to absorb exudates during the inflammatory phase, have high mechanical strength, elasticity and conformability and allow for easy and painless release from the wound after use.

Nanocellulose is a highly fibrillated material, composed of nanofibrils with diameters in the nanometer scale (< 100 nm), with high aspect ratio and high specific surface area (“Cellulose fibres, nanofibrils and microfibrils: The morphological sequence of MFC components from a plant physiology and fibre technology point of view” [open access article in Nanoscale Research Letters]). Cellulose nanofibrils have many advantageous properties, such as high strength and ability to self-assembly.

Recently, the suitability of cellulose nanofibrils from wood for forming elastic cryo-gels has been demonstrated by scientists from Paper and Fibre Research Institute (PFI) and Lund University (“Cross-linking cellulose nanofibrils for potential elastic cryo-structured gels”  [open access in Nanoscale Research Letters). Cryogelation is a technique that makes it possible to engineer 3-D structures with controlled porosity. A porous structure with interconnected pores is essential for use in modern wound healing in which absorption of exudates, release of medicines into the wound or exchange of cells are essential properties.

The Research Council of Norway recently awarded a grant to the NanoHeal project, from the project page on the PFI (Pulp and Fibre Research Institute) website,

This multi-disciplinary research programme will develop novel material solutions for use in advanced wound healing based on nanofibrillated cellulose structures. This proposal requires knowledge on the effective production and application of sustainable and innovative micro- and nanofibres based on cellulose. The project will assess the ability of these nanofibres to interact with complementary polymers to form novel material structures with optimised adhesion and moulding properties, absorbance, porosity and mechanical performance.  The NanoHeal proposal brings together leading scientists in the fields of nanocellulose technology, polymer chemistry, printing and nanomedicine, to produce biocompatible and biodegradable natural polymers that can be functionalized for clinical applications. As a prototype model, the project will develop materials for use in wound healing. However, the envisaged technologies of synthesis and functionalization will have a diversity of commercial and industrial applications.

The project is funded by the Research Council of Norway/NANO2021, and is a cooperation between several leading R&D partners.

  • PFI
  • NTNU [Norwegian University of Science and Technology], Faculty of medicine
  • Cardiff University
  • Swansea University
  • Lund University
  • AlgiPharma

Project period: 2012-2016

I wonder when I’m going to start hearing about Canadian research into wood nanocellulose  (nanocrystalline cellulose or otherwise) applications.

Think shrimp for wound healing and face creams for age-defying skin

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A research team at Fairleigh Dickinson University (New Jersey, US) has taken the first step towards developing new treatments for skin wounds and, possibly, new anti-aging cosmetics. From the March 16, 2012 news item on physorg.com,

… Mihaela Leonida of Fairleigh Dickinson University, in Teaneck, New Jersey and colleagues writing in the International Journal of Nano and Biomaterials describe how they have prepared nanoparticles of chitosan that could have potential in preventing infection in wounds as well as enhancing the wound-healing process itself by stimulating skin cell growth.

Here’s where the shrimp figure in,

Chitosan is a natural, non-toxic and biodegradable, polysaccharide readily obtained from chitin, the main component of the shells of shrimp, lobster and the beak of the octopus and squid. Its antimicrobial activity is well known and has been exploited in dentistry to prevent caries and as preservative applications in food packaging. It has even been tested as an additive for antimicrobial textiles used in clothing for healthcare and other workers.

You can also find this March 16, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

The team made their chitosan nanoparticles (CNP) using an ionic gelation process with sodium tripolyphosphate. This process involves the formation of bonds between polymers strands, a so-called cross-linking process. Conducted in these conditions it precludes the need for complex preparative chemistry or toxic solvents. CNP can also be made in the presence of copper and silver ions, known antimicrobial agents. The researchers’ preliminary tests show the composite materials to have enhanced activity against two representative types of bacteria.

… The team has also demonstrated that the CNP have skin regenerative properties in tests on skin cell fibroblasts and keratinocytes, in the laboratory, which might even have implications for anti-aging skin care products.