New diabetic wound treatment in development at the University of Iowa Hospitals
People living with diabetes often have to deal with slow healing wounds or ones that don’t heal at all. That can lead to infections and other complications. But there’s a new treatment under development at the University of Iowa that will help these wounds heal faster. James Byrne assistant professor in radiation oncology at the University of Iowa, explains the unusual treatment.
“We took inspiration from the culinary arts, the field of what they call molecular gastronomy,” he said. “If you think of fancy restaurants, of trying to improve their patrons’ experience by using things like foams on the top of steaks or things that are like gummy bears in unique ways.”
That foam is more commonly seen in coffeehouses. “They have these whipping siphons that they use to create forms on the top of hot chocolates and different other drinks and so we use those same systems to create some of the materials that we’re applying to wounds to try and promote wound healing.”
Carbon monoxide is naturally produced in people to help them heal, says Byrne. “We have infections or let’s say you pull a muscle, or you hurt your knee and it’s inflamed. In those states, our bodies ramp up carbon monoxide to try and decrease inflammation. By giving a little bit of extra carbon monoxide, we can decrease inflammation and try and promote some of the increase in blood flow to those areas.”
The initial focus for the research is on improving healing in diabetic wounds. “The publication was on diabetic wounds and trying to promote wound healing for ulcers that have a harder time healing because of diabetes. We’re taking this into other fronts and have other studies that are ongoing where we’re trying to do general wound healing in the trauma setting.”
The foam could eventually be used for car accident victims or soldiers wounded on the battlefield, but Byrne says there’s more work to do before that happens. “To be able to do that, we have to have things that promote coagulation, that promote clotting.”
Sometimes research leads to unusual discoveries. “We’ve created materials that are the exact same as Pop Rocks and they pop just like Pop Rocks,” said Byrne. “They contain pressurized carbon monoxide or pressurized oxygen to try and deliver that for some benefit. That’s certainly something that we can turn to if we need to.”
There’s no timeline yet for human trials for the foam and Byrne is quick to praise the work done at other institutions. “This is a hugely collaborative team. We have a lot of great people who are part of the team here at the University of Iowa. If you look at the investigators on the study as well as folks from MIT and Beth Israel Deaconess, they’ve all been contributors. I have to give full credit to the entire team because it is again a big collaborative effort to make things like this happen.”
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