New bioengineered scaffold may help large deep burn wounds heal faster and Avita can use this

Testing the new scaffold for deep burn wound treatment

The research team wanted to find out what type of scaffold would best promote the formation of new blood vessels — a process known as angiogenesis. They used a commercially available collagen-based scaffold to test four different types of scaffolds on a large deep burn wound model in mice.

The biomaterial types are:

• collagen scaffold only
• collagen scaffold seeded with endothelial cells
• collagen scaffold modified with a combination molecule of a collagen-binding peptide bound to dermatan sulfate and LXW7
• collagen scaffold modified with the same combination molecule in conjunction with endothelial cells

The team applied the scaffolds on the deep skin burn wounds. They took photos for wound healing measurements on days 1, 7, 14, 21, 28 and 35 after treatment.

The wound healing process consists of four overlapping phases: homeostasis, inflammation, proliferation and remodeling. The study showed that the combined treatment loaded with endothelial cells had a higher wound healing rate in the proliferation phase. It accelerated key processes such as wound healing rate, re-epithelialization, vascularization and collagen deposition at Day 35.

“The combined treatment not only allowed the survival of the seeded endothelial cells, but also accelerated the recruitment of the body’s endothelial cells. It has the potential for treating large areas of deep burns by building a better-quality wound base and improving wound healing,” Wang said.

The leading authors on the study are Hengyue Song and Kewa Gao from UC Davis. Other coauthors include Dake Hao, Andrew Li, Ruiwu Liu, Bryan Anggito, Boyan Yin, Qianyu Jin, Vanessa Dartora, Kit S. Lam, Lucas R. Smith, Alyssa Panitch, and Diana L. Farmer from UC Davis, and Jianda Zhou from The Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, China. Song, Gao, Hao, Farmer and Wang are affiliated with Shriners Children’s Northern California.