UI doctor, researchers engineer new foam that could one day be a game changer for healing diabetic wounds

This story first appeared in STEM in Iowa 2024, an annual special section distributed in The Gazette that provides an in-depth look at how this educational pathway is having an impact in the classroom as well as in future workforce pipelines.

A treatment that could one day help prevent many of the complications of diabetes was inspired by a tool used in your local coffeehouse.

Researchers at the University of Iowa have developed a method of embedding therapeutic gases into a foam that, when applied topically to hard-to-treat diabetic wounds and pressure ulcers, greatly improved healing in animal models.

High blood sugar levels associated with diabetes can damage circulation, so there’s less blood resupplying critical nutrients and oxygen to tissues to help them regenerate. It also can weaken the immune system, a combination that can really stunt wound healing and regeneration of tissue.

“There is a huge need for treating diabetic ulcers and diabetic wounds, and so my team really wanted to look at the materials used in wound healing and see if we could accelerate healing in that setting,” said Dr. James Byrne, the lead author of the study — published March 12 in “Device,” an academic journal that publishes groundbreaking, multi-disciplinary research on applied technology across STEM fields — and an assistant professor of radiation oncology and biomedical engineering at the University of Iowa.

According to the American Diabetes Association, more than 37 million Americans — including 10 percent of Iowa’s adult population — have diagnosed diabetes. Diabetic wounds are typically slow to heal, which can lead to infections, possible amputations and even death.

Pressure ulcers, which are created when a patient sits or lays down for long periods of time, are a frequently seen problem at hospitals and nursing homes.

The foam is created using the same whipping siphons you see at coffeehouses and restaurants. Hyaluronic acid, which the body naturally produces and is used for hydration in many skin care products, was used as a base material. Then carbon monoxide (CO) —something the body also naturally produces as a breakdown product — was embedded into the hyaluronic acid.

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“Carbon monoxide generally has a bad rap. We all have carbon monoxide detectors in our homes, but the body actually naturally produces it, and it’s a good thing within the body because it actually helps to fight inflammation, it helps to at times regenerate blood vessels in areas where there’s a necessary regrowth,” Dr. Byrne said.

Silver nanoparticles were also included for their antimicrobial benefits.

The wounds treated with the CO-infused foam were compared to those treated with a nitrogen-infused foam and untreated wounds.

“We ended up showing that with these materials, we can promote and increase wound healing rates in diabetic and pressure ulcer small animal models,” Dr. Byrne said. The researchers compared the efficacy of the different methods by measuring the wounds and looking at them under the microscope.

Another study the group hopes to publish soon showed similar boosted wound healing results in pigs using a gel-type delivery system. Testing on human patients is the eventual goal, although Dr. Byrne said that’s a ways off as the team works to ensure its safety.

“Our hope is to really take it into those phases and then get more translatability and have a system that could be easily taken up by the public rather than having something just done in the hospital or as an outpatient,” Dr. Byrne said.

Other members of the study team from the UI included Emily Witt, a research associate in Dr. Byrne’s lab, and medical student Alex Leach. Researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) also worked on the study, which was primarily done at the UI.

Dr. Byrne said he first started thinking about ways to trap gasses in materials back in 2018 while he was doing his post-doctoral research. With the success of these early pre-clinical studies, he’s motivated to keep going and hopes that one day it can be used almost like a Band-Aid.

“I find it extremely rewarding,” Dr. Byrne said. “That’s part of what I love about engineering and science, is being able to build and create new things that can potentially help people.”