European Scientists Develop Promising New Technique to Heal Wounds

A nurse wraps a bandage after demonstrating the treatment of a mock gun wound at UCI Medical Center in Orange, Calif., on June 3, 2022. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Researchers have developed a new technique to heal wounds three times faster using electric stimulation—a breakthrough that could prove to be of significant value to people suffering from disorders like diabetes.

“In order to study exactly how this works for wounds, we developed a kind of biochip on which we cultured skin cells, which we then made tiny wounds in. Then we stimulated one wound with an electric field, which clearly led to it healing three times as fast as the wound that healed without electric stimulation,” said Maria Asplund, associate professor of bioelectronics at Chalmers University of Technology and head researcher, according to an April 18 press release.

Researchers from Chalmers University in Sweden and University of Freiburg in Germany developed the innovative electricity-based technique of rapid wound healing.

The researchers also focused on wound healing among people suffering from diabetes. According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 11.3 percent of the U.S. population has diabetes.

Among diabetes patients, wounds tend to heal slowly while the injury progresses more quickly. Those who suffer from spinal injuries or poor blood circulation also experience slow healing.

When researchers mimicked diabetes in the cell culture, wounds on the biochip healed slowly. However, when electric simulation was introduced, the speed of healing increased.

“Chronic wounds are a huge societal problem that we don’t hear a lot about. Our discovery of a method that may heal wounds up to three times faster can be a game changer for diabetic and elderly people, among others, who often suffer greatly from wounds that won’t heal,” Asplund said.

Uni-Directional Wound Closure Method

The study, published in the journal Lab on a Chip on Jan. 18, looked at whether electrotactically closing a wound’s gap from one wound edge (uni-directional) is as effective as alternately polarizing both the wound’s edges.

It was based on the idea that skin cells are electrotactic, meaning that the cells directionally “migrate” in electric fields.

As such, if an electric field were introduced in a petri dish containing skin cells, the cells will cease moving randomly. Instead, they will begin moving in the same direction. The uni-directional electric guidance was found to be “superior” due to its threefold speed in wound closure.

The team now plans on exploring individualized treatment options.

“We are now looking at how different skin cells interact during stimulation, to take a step closer to a realistic wound,” Asplund said.

“We want to develop a concept to be able to ‘scan’ wounds and adapt the stimulation based on the individual wound. We are convinced that this is the key to effectively helping individuals with slow-healing wounds in the future.”

Faster Wound Healing Techniques

Chalmers University’s wound-healing technique is one of many new high-speed healing methods.

In August 2021, researchers from the University of Central Florida discovered that using specially designed ceramics wrapped in a rubber blanket accelerated wound healing.

The ceramic blanket was tested in a mouse model which simulated wounds suffered during combat. The blanket was found to absorb energy from the wounded subject and then transmit that energy as a “novel emission” that boosted wound healing at a cellular level.

In November, researchers from the University of Nottingham announced the discovery of a new class of polymer capable of instructing both immune and non-immune cells to help in healing diabetic wounds. The new polymer could be applied as a coating on standard wound dressings to boost healing.

When researchers tested it on an animal model, the material produced three times more “fibroblast activity” over a period of up to 96 hours while achieving more than 80 percent wound closure.

Fibroblasts are a cell type represented in connective tissue and are critical in supporting the normal healing of wounds.