A burn is a injury to the skin or other organ tissue primarly caused by heat or due to electricity, radiation, friction or contact with chemicals, leading to significant health complications.
What causes burns?
The problem
The skin is most severely damaged. Those affected may suffer pain, blisters, swelling and skin loss. In severe burns, deeper body structures such as muscle, fat or even bone tissue can also be affected. Such deep and severe burns can result in intravenous fluids, shock, severe infections, surgical interventions and rehabilitation.
How can we help?
With our protein based hydrogel for burn wound treatment!
Our reSkin hydrogel is a wound dressing, which combines a wide variety of treatment methods, thus saving time and effort for doctors and on the other hand reducing pain for patients.
Hydrogel
Hydrogels are three-dimensional networks that consist of polymers linked by various cross-linking methods to produce different functions and properties. Due to hydrophilic groups they are capable of absorbing large amounts of water or watery fluids, while still maintain their structural network integrity. Hydrogels are an amazingly versatile material that can be used in a number of different ways, including in drug delivery and wound dressings.
Resilin
Our hydrogel is made from resilin, a protein originally found in dragonflies. This natural elastomer allows the dragonfly's wings to move rapidly. By repeating exon 1 of its sequence, we want to produce a synthetic resilin with excellent mechanical properties resulting from the formation of dityrosine links between different resilin strands. This makes our hydrogel superior in terms of both elasticity and strength, and it is therefore ideal for application on the skin.
Hyaluronic acid
The second component is hyaluronic acid (HA), a polysaccharide of the skins' extracellular matrix that is capable of absorbing water and of expanding its volume up to 1000 times. This unique property has been taken advantage of in the development of our hydrogel. Its natural occurence in skin tissue makes it safe for application on open burn wounds. To produce our hydrogel, hyaluronic acid must first be converted into methacrylated hyaluronic acid to allow linkage.
Photocrosslinking
To produce our reSkin hydrogel wound dressing, we use photo-crosslinking to form bonds between our two main components resilin and methacrylated hyaluronic acid. By exposure to a specific wavelength our photo-initiator riboflavin forms radicals, which then interact with our two base components. The result is a three-dimensional network of crosslinked resilin and hyaluronic acid forming the base of our reSkin hydrogel.
Active ingredients
Astaxanthin
One substance to be incorporated into our hydrogel is astaxanthin, a powerful antioxidant with wound-healing properties. It also supports the repair of damaged tissue and helps to improve the skins’ elasticity while minimizing the deepening and spreading of the burn within the first 48 hours after the skin damaging event.
Vitamin E
Vitamin E is another powerful antioxidant that protects the skin from harmful free radicals, which are usually present in higher concentrations in burn wounds and thereby increase the risk of infection. It additionally stabilizes astaxanthin.
Bromelain
Bromelain is a protease found in pineapple stems which helps to remove dead skin cells, reduces inflammation, and accelerates wound healing. Due to these properties, bromelain is used to assess whether a skin transplant is necessary or not. In only four hours after application, it will show the need for surgery.
What makes our hydrogel sustainable?
In the development of our hydrogel, we have selected natural components. The inherent biocompatibility of naturally occurring polymers, such as hyaluronic acid, and proteins, including resilin, is attributed to their low toxicity, biodegradability and structural and functional similarities to the extracellular matrix.
Our applications for the following awards:
