<p>People can soon cut down the time taken to heal their everyday cuts and burns by half with the help of a new therapy developed by researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University here.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Details of the therapy, which was successfully tested in mice, were published online in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.<br /><br />"We envision that our nanoparticle therapy could be used to speed the healing of all sorts of wounds, including everyday cuts and burns, surgical incisions, and chronic skin ulcers, which are a particular problem in the elderly and people with diabetes," said study co-leader David Sharp, professor of physiology & biophysics at Einstein.<br /><br />The researchers discovered that an enzyme called fidgetin-like 2 (FL2) puts the brakes on skin cells as they migrate towards wounds to heal them.<br /><br />They reasoned that the healing cells could reach their destination faster if their levels of FL2 could be reduced.<br /><br />So they developed a drug that inactivates the gene that makes FL2 and then put the drug in tiny gel capsules called nanoparticles and applied the nanoparticles to wounds on mice.<br />The treated wounds healed much faster than untreated wounds.<br /><br />FL2 belongs to the fidgetin family of enzymes, which play varying roles in cellular development and function.<br /><br />To learn more about FL2's role in humans, Sharp suppressed FL2's activity in human cells in tissue culture. When those cells were placed on a standard wound assay (for measuring properties like cell migration and proliferation), they moved unusually fast.<br />"This suggested that if we could find a way to target FL2 in humans, we might have a new way to promote wound healing," Sharp said.<br /></p>
<p>People can soon cut down the time taken to heal their everyday cuts and burns by half with the help of a new therapy developed by researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University here.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Details of the therapy, which was successfully tested in mice, were published online in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.<br /><br />"We envision that our nanoparticle therapy could be used to speed the healing of all sorts of wounds, including everyday cuts and burns, surgical incisions, and chronic skin ulcers, which are a particular problem in the elderly and people with diabetes," said study co-leader David Sharp, professor of physiology & biophysics at Einstein.<br /><br />The researchers discovered that an enzyme called fidgetin-like 2 (FL2) puts the brakes on skin cells as they migrate towards wounds to heal them.<br /><br />They reasoned that the healing cells could reach their destination faster if their levels of FL2 could be reduced.<br /><br />So they developed a drug that inactivates the gene that makes FL2 and then put the drug in tiny gel capsules called nanoparticles and applied the nanoparticles to wounds on mice.<br />The treated wounds healed much faster than untreated wounds.<br /><br />FL2 belongs to the fidgetin family of enzymes, which play varying roles in cellular development and function.<br /><br />To learn more about FL2's role in humans, Sharp suppressed FL2's activity in human cells in tissue culture. When those cells were placed on a standard wound assay (for measuring properties like cell migration and proliferation), they moved unusually fast.<br />"This suggested that if we could find a way to target FL2 in humans, we might have a new way to promote wound healing," Sharp said.<br /></p>