SBIR Phase I: Tunable Oxygenating Biopolymer Hydrogel Dressings for Chronic Wound Care

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This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will investigate novelapproaches for biopolymer materials that uniquely enable oxygen incorporation into hydrogeldressings to improve and accelerate chronic wound healing. The proposed work differs drasticallyfrom other research programs and commercial efforts to use oxygen in chronic wound healing asit is the first to combine oxygen, a moist and clean healing environment, and antimicrobialproperties into one cost-effective and easy-to-use product. Current commercial oxygen-deliverytherapies for wound care, e.g., hyperbaric oxygen chambers and topical oxygen devices, areintermittent, inconvenient to use, and require access to expensive specialized equipment.Successfully introducing oxygenating wound dressings to the market will allow addressing theserious and pervasive burden on healthcare facilities and the exorbitant costs associated withchronic wound care. In the USA alone, diabetic chronic wounds cause direct healthcare-relatedcosts of $1.5 billion and total direct and indirect costs of $20 billion.The proposed research incorporates proprietary patent-pending biopolymer materials andprocessing methods to create oxygenating hydrogels that can be made into wound dressings.The dressings have the unique potential to provide uniform and tunable oxygenation to healchronic wounds. Dressing embodiments, syntheses, and manufacturing techniques will beexplored to improve product performance and characteristics, reduce costs, and demonstratecommercial feasibility and viability of the production process. Thus, knowledge of biomaterials forwound care will be significantly advanced by the proposed research. Prototype wound dressingswill be characterized and tested based on customer requirements.