IIT-M develops new method to treat diabetic wounds

Wounds on diabetic patients do not heal as rapidly as it would in a normal and healthy individual. This leads to chronic non-healing wounds that can even result in amputation. 

Treatment of such wounds is still a major clinical challenge. Although there are some wound dressings that are commercially available, they are very expensive. The project by Vignesh Muthuvijayan, assistant professor, Department of Biotechnology, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, IIT Madras, focuses on developing lowcost wound dressings that are effective in treating diabetic wounds. 

T Ponrasu, an institute post doctoral fellow working under Muthuvijayan’s mentorship, has developed a new and rapid technique to prepare reduced graphene oxide from graphite powder. 

“We wanted to exploit graphene based materials’ property of improving blood vessel formation to prepare an inexpensive wound dressing,” Muthuvijayan said. 

“The psyllium-reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite that we prepared has shown good results in animal studies. We hope this is the first step towards developing inexpensive wound dressings using graphene-based materials for clinical use,” he added. 

The wound healing efficiency of these scaffolds was studied, and the results revealed that these scaffolds provided an ideal environment for the re-growth of damaged skin. Studies showed that these scaffolds treatment enhanced new blood vessels formation, collagen synthesis and deposition in treated wounds. 

Overall, the research shows that these wound dressings could significantly accelerate healing of wounds. The wounds treated with the dressings healed in 16 days compared to 23 days in untreated normal wounds. Similarly, the diabetic wounds treated with the dressings healed in 20 days compared to 26 days in untreated diabetic wounds.