CHBRI - Wound Healing Laboratory
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Overview
Four million patients acquire burn scars each year in the developed world, of these 70 % occur in young children. At the Children's Hospital at Westmead alone 1000 children are seen each year with burns. Burns often leave patients with scars covering much of their body. Scarring may be aesthetically disfiguring, is frequently painful and may be functionally disabling such as scar contractures. Burn treatment is often a long process and unfortunately as children are still growing and developing multiple painful surgeries may be required to release contractures until they reach adulthood. There are no licensed therapeutics in clinical use proven to reduce scars. Current clinical practice to reduce scarring in burns patients involves mainly painful mechanical intervention for these patients such as pressure bandages, or surgical intervention using skin grafts. New healing therapies need to be developed to reduce these painful scars and ensure a happy normal childhood for these children.
The aim of our research is to cut down the time it takes for a burn to heal and therefore reduce the subsequent scarring; minimising the length of hospitalisation, surgeries, costs, disfigurement, functional disabilities and emotional burden of the burns patients. Wounds that heal more rapidly tend to have an improved outcome in terms of scaring, contracture and overall cosmetic result. The healing of skin is a complex process and is generally accompanied by a robust inflammatory response. The selective influx of macrophages into and their persistence in the wound dictate the extent of inflammation during wound healing where excess and ongoing inflammation lengthens healing time resulting in increased scarring, contracture and reduced overall cosmetic results. Mice that lack macrophages have been shown to heal faster with reduced scarring. We are identifying how, if and when would be a good time to decrease the number of macrophages in a wound to reduce scaring without affecting the over healing process.
Research achievements
Significant health outcomes for our patients and their families that have arisen from our research and include:
The CHBRI Wound Healing Laboratory was established in November 2006 and after equipping the laboratory research has focused on macrophage migration and adhesion. We have established a method to separate macrophages from blood and skin debrided from burn patients and have identified the specific integrins upregulated in macrophages purified from debrided skin by comparing these macrophages to those found in the same patients' blood. We have also looked at how these integrins are transported to the cell surface to allow the macrophages to adhere and migrate around the wound.
