DermaMend: A Chronic Wound Healing Patch from Adipose Tissue-Derived ECM & Accompanying Patient Education Materials

Mina, Anastasia

Student Work

DermaMend: A Chronic Wound Healing Patch from Adipose Tissue-Derived ECM & Accompanying Patient Education Materials

Public Deposited

Diabetic Foot Ulcers (DFUs) are a persistent and major issue faced by patients with Type I and Type II diabetes. In America, roughly 1 in 10 Americans suffer from diabetes, with 15-20% developing a foot ulcer in their lifetime. These ulcers are the leading cause of hospitalization amongst this patient population. DFUs are extremely challenging to treat given the hostile environment of the wound and its inability to undergo normal, acute wound healing, as well as other diabetic complications including low blood sugar and peripheral neuropathy. There is a lack of accessible and inexpensive options to treat these chronic wounds, often resulting in costly surgical procedures or amputations. Thus, this project aimed to develop an off-the-shelf, more affordable, and effective product that assisted the wound healing process to heal and close DFUs and other major lesions. To achieve this, the team worked to decellularize adipose tissue and in turn, utilize the extracellular matrix (ECM) of the tissue with additive growth factors to generate a solution that bolstered and supported proliferation of cells at the wound site. The working prototype is a flexible and customizable bandage-like patch to deliver ECM components and supporting reagents onto a chronic wound site. Further, the patients for whom this product is developed are affected by chronic diseases that disproportionately affect cultural, racial, and ethnic minority groups, those of a lower socioeconomic status, and most notably, those who don’t speak English as their first or second language. These populations often have negative experiences with healthcare providers and there is often a lack of sufficient intercultural communication within patient-physician relationships. As an off-the-shelf product, this product is designed to replace more invasive, in-house treatments or surgeries, and therefore, requires more autonomy on the patient’s end. These needs are rarely addressed in current patient education materials. Therefore, an additional patient education booklet was developed by one student on the project team. This booklet acts as a vehicle to reflect on the importance of better intercultural, written and visual rhetoric within healthcare.

This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

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