What if our bodies could turn into their own pharmacies? 💊

A team at Imperial College London have developed a smart biomaterial dressing that can capture the body’s own healing proteins and only releases them specifically when repair cells pull on them, to accelerate healing.

New research led by Dr Magdalene Yan Yoong Ho, PhD and Dr Ben Almquist PhD FIMMM, published in Nature Materials, shows the dressings accelerated healing in mouse models and in human skin tested in the laboratory - a world-first demonstration of this mechanism in living, repairing tissue.

The bio-inspired wound dressing is being developed as a spinout, Traxion Biotech, led by Dr Magdalene Yan Yoong Ho. They are hoping to commercialise the new smart dressing, which could bring the technology to millions of people living with difficult-to-heal wounds such as burns, trauma wounds and diabetic foot ulcers.

This research has been supported by Imperial Enterprise Lab via the MedTech SuperConnector, WE Innovate National, Imperial Venture Mentoring and #VentureCatalystChallenge programmes.