Customer discovery and market access planning for light-activated antimicrobial wound care product

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The management of wounds is a "silent epidemic" that is challenging health services worldwide. The NHS treats 2.2 million patients with a chronic wound, the management of which costs at least £5.6 billion each year. A major factor inhibiting wound healing is infections caused by colonising microbes. Untreated infections prevent healing and often spread; treated infections almost always re-occur and this cycle of infection can necessitate surgery and even amputation. The increasing prevalence of co-morbidities like diabetes and obesity, and limited treatment options for the increasing problem of bacteria resistant to antibiotics means that incidence of chronically infected wounds is rising in all geographies and age groups. Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are a particularly challenging chronic wound, afflicting around 9% of all adult diabetics; chronic infections of DFUs result in loss of mobility and significant pain. As we face the prospect of a world where antibiotics are increasingly less effective, we urgently need new modalities that can inhibit infections that arise in chronic wounds such as DFUs to aid healing and, thus, lower the enormous burden faced by healthcare services.LightOx, based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, have developed molecules that, when activated by light, cause the destruction of bacteria that colonise wounds through the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). We have also shown that these molecules are capable of disrupting and inhibiting the growth of biofilms -- a common complication of infected wounds that can inhibit healing. Uniquely, bacteria are unable to become resistant towards ROS, and hence, LightOx see great potential for their novel light-activated molecules as the next generation of antibacterial technology for the growing burden of infected chronic wounds.In this feasibility project, LightOx will engage Health Innovation North West Coast to access leaders in the NHS, charities, and patient groups to understand the huge challenges that woundcare professionals face on a daily basis, with a particular focus on DFUs. We will determine the unique characteristics of DFU woundcare (and other wound types), gather feedback from patients suffering from these wounds and the nurses and clinicians who treat them, and further develop market access plans for our technology. This information will enable us to co-develop a specification that LightOx can use to progress their novel antibacterial technology into a product that can improve outcomes for sufferers of these painful wounds.