The invention is a collagen membrane functionalized with mannose for the treatment of chronic wounds. Due to its mannose coating, this membrane is able to induce the polarization of macrophages to an anti-inflammatory state, resulting in less overall inflammation during wound repair.
Stage of Development
In vitro data: Membrane synthesis and characterization studies have demonstrated the stability of the mannosylated membrane. In vitro studies indicated that the mannosylated membrane was able to successfully polarize macrophages to the M2 phenotype and reduce pro-inflammatory gene expression compared to standard collagen membranes.
In vivo data: Preliminary mouse experiments revealed that implanted mannose-coated collagen membranes showed significantly less inflammation compared to the regular collagen membranes and accelerated the wound healing response.
Competitive Landscape
Autologous skin grafts are currently considered the ‘gold standard’ for wound care in the clinic. Unfortunately, the availability of healthy donor tissue is often limited, resulting in the development of tissue‐engineered skin substitutes which offer alternative grafting approaches to wound care. Many of these products contain diverse biomaterials such as collagen, silicone, or nylon meshes but there are also some substitutes which are composed of cadaveric dermis. Additionally, there are many products that have been developed and applied for therapeutic applications to mimic the native skin architecture and its microenvironment properties, such as injectable cell suspensions, cell‐spray devices, or 3D scaffolds for skin tissue regeneration. Despite the promise of the tissue engineering approaches to date, there are still significant limitations in the cost of production and the potential risk of causing further healing impairments through triggering the onset of chronic inflammation. This biomimetic scaffold overcomes these limitations because it is specifically designed to reduce the inflammatory response and is manufactured using a cost-effective protocol.
Competitive Advantages
• Reduced inflammatory response during wound repair
• Faster healing time
• Implantable and/or topical applications
• Reproducible, scalable, and cost-effective manufacturing protocol
