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

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将研究生物聚合物材料的新方法，这种新方法独特地使氧气融入到水凝胶敷料中，以改善和加速慢性伤口愈合。这项工作与其他在慢性伤口愈合中使用氧气的研究项目和商业努力有很大的不同，因为它是第一个将氧气、潮湿和清洁的愈合环境以及抗菌特性结合到一个成本效益高且易于使用的产品中。目前用于伤口护理的商业氧气输送疗法，例如高压氧舱和局部供氧装置，是间歇性的，不方便使用，并且需要使用昂贵的专业设备。成功地将含氧伤口敷料引入市场，将有助于解决医疗机构普遍存在的严重负担，以及与慢性伤口护理相关的高昂成本。仅在美国，糖尿病慢性伤口造成的直接医疗相关费用为15亿美元，直接和间接总费用为200亿美元。拟议的研究结合了正在申请专利的生物聚合物材料和加工方法，以制造可制成伤口敷料的充氧水凝胶。该敷料具有独特的潜力，为健康伤口提供均匀和可调的氧合。将探讨敷料实施例、合成和制造技术，以提高产品性能和特性，降低成本，并证明生产过程的商业可行性和可行性。因此，生物材料在伤口护理方面的知识将通过拟议的研究得到显著推进。原型伤口敷料将根据客户要求进行表征和测试。

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.