The Smart Electronics For Personalized Tissue Regeneration

Approximately thirty million people in the United States suffer from diabetes. The prevalence of diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) in this population is 13%. While interventions for DFUs exist, including growth factors, extracellular matrix, engineered skin and negative pressure wound therapy, these treatments are only moderately effective. The ideal would care technology would be able to (i) create a moist and clean environment; (ii) protect the wound bed from trauma and infection; (iii) be non-toxic and non-allergenic and (iv) deliver therapeutic compounds essential for healing.

Current standard of care wound dressings is passive and cannot actively respond to variations in the wound environment. As a consequence, patients require more frequent hospital visits, increased wound monitoring and add to the treatment cost and stress on medical centers. Smart bandages are well positioned to address these challenges with their ability to integrate different types of (bio)sensors for real-time monitoring and active wound care treatment.

Peripheral nerve injuries represent the second leading cause of disability, affecting 20 million Americans resulting in approximately $150 billion spent in annual health care costs in the U.S. Severe nerve injuries leave a devastating impact on the patients’ ability to move and sense, and often lead to intractable neuropathic pain. When the nerve is damaged and is unable to regenerate across an injured plane, permanent loss of sensation is inevitable. Even in cases where direct primary nerve repair is possible, long-term recovery is often unsatisfactory with incomplete sensory and motor function recovery. Peripheral nerve injuries are debilitating, resulting in patients unable to resume daily functional activity or maintain a normal quality of life. There remains a pressing need to develop effective devices to promote neuro-regeneration at the site of injury.  

Our team is combining electrical engineering and bioengineering, using novel biocompatible technologies to design and build new methods of augmenting the healing parameters, enabling for accelerated nerve regeneration and maximal functional recovery of an injured area. We are building a novel nerve regenerating bandage that will allow for accelerated nerve regeneration, significantly extending treatment past the intraoperative period.