It is estimated that over 35 million
wounds required major therapeutic intervention in the US/year. Of
these 5.5 million are chronic wounds, which can cost up to $40,000
to heal. Thus billions of dollars/year are spent on wound care in
the US alone. Although millions have been spent on development of
recombinant growth factors (GF) for treatment of recalcitrant wounds,
the cost effective benefit of such treatment is meager. One problem
has been the delivery system for GFs and another problem has been
the need for more than one GF to heal wounds. An engineered biocompatible
polymer that is conductive for cell migration and has the capacity
to bind multiple endogenous GFs should overcome both of these problems.
Recently a natural polymer of hyaluronan (HA), derivatized with
recombinant domains of fibronectin (rFN CHV) which facilitate tissue
cell migration, has been engineered (engECM). The GLOBAL AIM of
this proposal is to further derivatize the HA polymer so that it
will bind multiple growth factors. To that end the following SPECIFIC
AIMS are proposed: 1) identify a GF binding peptide (GFBP) and crosslink
it to engECM; 2) determine the chemical and physical properties
of engECM GFBP; 3) determine the conductive and inductive properties
of engECM-GFBP. |
