BRAIN Wins Patent for Biological Wound Conditioning
Within the framework of the research project “Industrial production processes for novel enzymes and bio-active substances from natural sources: MikroPro“, BRAIN has been actively engaged in several subprojects including biological wound conditioning.
This involved isolating and characterising a proteolytic enzyme from the larvae of the Common green bottle fly Lucilia sericata and developing its biotechnological production. This highly potent and specific proteindigesting enzyme (protease) will now be used for conditioning badly healing wounds.
According to the professional magazine “Deutsches Ärzteblatt“, about 3 million people in Germany alone suffer from badly or never healing socalled chronic wounds. These include instances of Ulcus cruris, Decubitus or Diabetic foot ulcereration. Today, chronic wounds often require longterm, cost-intensive treatments and amputations are not rare.
At present, one of the difficulties of treating and healing the wound is the complete and pain-free removal of necrotic or devitalized tissue of the wound. This is where BRAIN and their method of enzymatic wound conditioning takes effect.
“By identifying this natural functional principle we are able to introduce a completely new method for conditioning wounds“, explains Dr. Frank Niehaus, program manager of Enzyme Technologies at BRAIN. “At the moment, we are working together with a number of leading partners to integrate the enzyme into innovative products as fast as possible, obtain international approval and therefore launch the product within the next few months“, adds Dr. Michael Krohn, Unit Head BioActives at BRAIN.
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