Chemical Administrated via Engineered Bacteria Hastens Wound Healing
Delivery B(acteria)oy
“Chronic wounds are a very common problem that causes severe suffering among those affected and demands extensive healthcare resources. With our new biotherapy, we hope to be able to accelerate the healing process by up to 80 per cent at the same time that the consumption of antibiotics can be reduced in connection with treatment!” said Eveline Vågesjö.
Less than five years have passed since Evelina Vågesjö, who at the time had just become a doctoral student, began thinking about the possibility of modifying lactic-acid bacteria to deliver medicine to wounds.
She has now succeeded in doing so.
Impaired wound closure is a growing medical problem associated with metabolic diseases and aging. Immune cells play important roles in wound healing by following instructions from the microenvironment. The team has now developed a technology to bioengineer the wound microenvironment and enhance healing abilities of the immune cells.
Existing methods for wound care include mechanical debridement, dressings, and significant amounts of antibiotics to prevent or treat the infection. But, with this new study that involves lactic acid bacteria as vectors to generate and deliver a human chemokine called CXCL12 in the wounds, speeds
up this whole process significantly.Uppsala University Integrative Physiology division Medical Cell Biology department professor Mia Phillipson said: “The chemokine, CXCL12, is endogenously upregulated in injured tissue and, by increasing the levels further, more immune cells are recruited and are more specialised to heal the wound, which accelerates the whole process.”
The technology raised CXCL12 levels by continuous and direct delivery to the wound surface for a particular duration. In the study, the scientists observed that the bioavailability of CXCL12 synergistically enhanced within the wound as the lactic acid produced by bacteria resulted in a slight pH drop that inhibits degradation.
When they tested this out in animal models- two diabetes models, one peripheral ischemia model, and a model with human skin biopsies- the technology was found to have increased the composition of immune cells in the wounds.
Phillipson added: “We have developed a drug candidate, a next-generation biologic medical product, and are now publishing the fantastic results from the preclinical part where wound healing was strongly accelerated in mice.
“We have a technology that works and now understand the mechanism behind it – how it accelerates wound healing.”
