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BTW this study on this new mouse model was actually done on the 27th November 2011, it is not new. http://www.nature.co...ature11499.html
Yes but it was first published on September 26, 2012. It had to go through a peer review process. Pretty standard stuff.
First of all: hello to all of you!
I've been following this topic for quite some time now and finally had to register because I was wondering if Harmon did say anything about the possibilities of the removal of already existing scars.
So my question to chuckstonchew would be: did you ask Harmon whether he thinks the hydrogel could be used for the excision of an existing scar and if so, what did he say?
Some of you proposed that question for Harmon but I think it hasn't been mentioned since then.
Obviously Harmon couldn't have given any definite answer as the gel hasn't been tested in humans but we also got the information from him, that in his experience humans generally regenerate even better than mice - something we wouldn't have known otherwise.
So thanks in advance for your answer chuckstonchew.
(I'm no native speaker, so hopefully you guys understand what I'm trying to say 
)
First of all: hello to all of you!
I've been following this topic for quite some time now and finally had to register because I was wondering if Harmon did say anything about the possibilities of the removal of already existing scars.
So my question to chuckstonchew would be: did you ask Harmon whether he thinks the hydrogel could be used for the excision of an existing scar and if so, what did he say?
Some of you proposed that question for Harmon but I think it hasn't been mentioned since then.
Obviously Harmon couldn't have given any definite answer as the gel hasn't been tested in humans but we also got the information from him, that in his experience humans generally regenerate even better than mice - something we wouldn't have known otherwise.
So thanks in advance for your answer chuckstonchew.
(I'm no native speaker, so hopefully you guys understand what I'm trying to say
)
I hope chuckstonechew or yourself dont thnk I'm hogging this question. Using the paper, this works by degrading rapidly inside a wound. So this would mean cutting out the scar, then the 8020 hydrogel will be placed in the wound, the 8020 will then be degraded rapidly by the neutrophils, and when the gel is degraded, cells will be directed to form by the body. (Using the paper again, Sun, Gerect, Harmon etc. and others cited in the paper haveestablished that the body directs cells to form when a hydrogel is degraded. They have also established that with a polar opposite non-degraded hydrogel, the body does not form new cells; and that the mammal body scars when the hydrogel is non-degradable.) Back on to the 8020, the 8020 after fine tuning, and compared to the 6040, has been found to be degrade rapidly in under 7 days.
First of all: hello to all of you!
I've been following this topic for quite some time now and finally had to register because I was wondering if Harmon did say anything about the possibilities of the removal of already existing scars.
So my question to chuckstonchew would be: did you ask Harmon whether he thinks the hydrogel could be used for the excision of an existing scar and if so, what did he say?
Some of you proposed that question for Harmon but I think it hasn't been mentioned since then.
Obviously Harmon couldn't have given any definite answer as the gel hasn't been tested in humans but we also got the information from him, that in his experience humans generally regenerate even better than mice - something we wouldn't have known otherwise.
So thanks in advance for your answer chuckstonchew.
(I'm no native speaker, so hopefully you guys understand what I'm trying to say
Welcome to the forum MatthiasINcity!
To answer your question directly - no. I never asked Harmon that specific question. I did not do so because it seemed it would be redundant...
I say this because as seabs stated, that is essentially exactly what their paper detailed. They cut out the unhealthy tissue, used the hydrogel, and then new tissue replaced it. The wound they created when they excised the unhealthy tissue was full thickness - you can't create a wound worse than that. And that includes if you were to cut out a scar.
Basically, the hydrogel clearly demonstrated it could grow healthy tissue after a complete, full thickness excision of the skin - Why the skin was excised would really have no relevancy because it is removed (every layer of it) and no longer remains as part of the skin so it wouldn't have any effect on the new wound created by the excision. So logical reasoning tells us you could completely excise a full thickness burn, full thickness scar, etc (any type of skin defect), and the hydrogel could grow new, healthy tissue in place of it.
I hope that makes sense!
will this hydrogel be avaliable in the next 10 years ?
If it works on humans, absolutely. Much sooner than 10 years.
It's a simple medical device. If it gets funding in November and the trials and everything else move smoothly and efficiently (and it works!), it seems (based on what we know at this point) it could potentially be available as soon as the end of next year. But again, that's if everything goes as smooth as possible, and in all honesty that seems to be a rare occurrence. But here's to hoping! 
Has anyone actually found out the amount of money they would need to proceed with secondary clinical trials?
I remember reading somewhere that they needed 60.000 or so for one of the studies, if I remember correctly. I don't know if that is any indication of how much they need for the clinical trials though.
Possible Treatment to Reduce Scarring Discovered
ScienceDaily (July 6, 2012) Whether from surgery or battle wounds, ugly scars can affect body and mind. Now a new research report appearing online in the FASEB Journal offers a new strategy to reduce or eliminate scars on the skin. Specifically, scientists from NYU describe how agents that block receptors for adenosine (a molecule generated from ATP which is used by the body to provide energy to muscles) can be applied topically to healing wounds to reduce scar size, yielding skin that feels more like the original, unscarred skin.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120706164416.htm
^nothing that'll translate to any thing clinically in the near future, but interesting nonetheless.
We should not be worried about the future of science and technology, I advice all of you to read books and watch videos of futurologist Raymond Kurzweil on YouTube, he has some ideas what kind of technologies we will have in the future (biotechnology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence), it is not 'mainstream' thinking but in the past many of his predictions about the future were pretty accurate, he thinks that in about 20 to 25 years from now we will have so called 'nanobots' in our bloodstream that could be used as a cure for many terrible disease, primarily for cancer, diabetes, heart,... and then for scars, acnes,... and then maybe even for aging, and even for 'mind uploading' (in about 40 years from now), and it should be a sure thing because nanobots are inevitable implication of so called 'Moore's law' which was valid for decades in the past and hopefully will continue to be valid in the future.
Here is something about nanobots:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanobots
And he says that today's medicine is how he calls it 'hit or miss medicine' and that is the reason why the progress in a quest for a cure for various diseases like cancer, diabetes (and scars, I would add) was so slow and so disappointing, but he says it will be different in the future because the medicine will be transformed into information technology, he says that all living organisms are essentially very complex information systems and DNAs are actually 'software' which operates that 'information system' and in the future it will be possible to 'reprogram' that 'software' to get the desired characteristics of that 'information system', because of that medicine in the future will experience explosive growth in accordance with Moore's law, and that kind of medicine is in fact biotechnology/genetic engineering. And he says that we will see the full maturation of biotechnology in 2020s and nanotechnology in 2030s.
All of that could sound silly, unrealistic but it is actually quite realistic because the basic premise on which he bases all of his predictions is basically very simple: he says that Moore's law applies only to information technologies (it is actually extended Moore's law that applies to everything with the purpose of collection, processing and storage of data) and that all other technologies were progressing more slowly than information technologies and were generally stagnant (such as medicine, energy, space exploration,...) which is completely true, but that will be changed in the future because all other technologies will become information technologies (like medicine - as a result it will be possible to manipulate the human genome and we will have nanobots in our bloodstream, and transportation - we will have driverless cars in about 10 years that will be drived by artificial intelligence on highways, and so on).
Here is Ray Kurzweil:
http://nanogloss.com.../#axzz272aQXKmm
Researchers expect that nanobots will be able to engineer material using the most basic building blocks of life, so it naturally follows that they would be able to clear away dead tissue from a wound site and slowly rebuild healthy skin in its place to join the gash together again. This may even be accomplished without resulting scar tissue, thanks to the level of detail that nanobots can achieve.
Here is something interesting:
http://en.wikipedia....e_Outer_Limits)
Dr. Stephen Ledbetter makes a technological and medical breakthrough when he creates a type of tiny machine, known as nanobots, capable of curing any disease or imperfections in the human body.
The nanobots not only cure Andy's cancer, they improve his health in other ways, including: removing a scar, improving his eyesight, and making him more energetic and sexually active with his fiancee. In Stephen's lab, Andy puts his hand over a bunsen burner causing a severe burn, but the nanobots repair the damaged skin in seconds.
Facts: A non degradable hydrogel when implanted into a wound gets rejected by the body, on the other hand a hydrogel that get digested creates new cells, established facts. Appendages never grow in scar tissue, nothing grows in scar tissue bar scar tissue, established facts. Scar tissue is slow forming and forms over months, scar denies reepithilization of normal tissue. In non wounded tissue your tissue is in a turnover where it is constantly shedded and reepithilized. The reepithilization fills a void and denys scar. In 2011 a hydrogel, balanced and engineered to be in an 8020 ratio of hydrogel and dextran, was placed in a mammal wound and was eaten rapidly by neutrophils in 7 days, this produced complete regeneration; in under 14 days the wound was reepithilized. On the other hand the control behaved exactly like it does in any mammal, it slowly degraded and a scar formed. The theory results ratio is clearly balanced in the results.
Facts: A non degradable hydrogel when implanted into a wound gets rejected by the body, on the other hand a hydrogel that get digested creates new cells, established facts. Appendages never grow in scar tissue, nothing grows in scar tissue bar scar tissue, established facts. Scar tissue is slow forming and forms over months, scar denies reepithilization of normal tissue. In non wounded tissue your tissue is in a turnover where it is constantly shedded and reepithilized. The reepithilization fills a void and denys scar. In 2011 a hydrogel, balanced and engineered to be in an 8020 ratio of hydrogel and dextran, was placed in a mammal wound and was eaten rapidly by neutrophils in 7 days, this produced complete regeneration; in under 14 days the wound was reepithilized. On the other hand the control behaved exactly like it does in any mammal, it slowly degraded and a scar formed. The theory results ratio is clearly balanced in the results.
Now I understand that you're right when you say that the skin regeneration using scaffolds (like synthetic polymers/hydrogels or ECMs) is the only appropriate approach that can accomplish scar free healing during this decade, all other approaches are not appropriate at today's level of development of science and technology, biotechnology (manipulations with genes) is not right approach because biotechnology is still quite primitive, RNA interference is an interesting new tool in biotechnology and Ray Kurzweil often mention that but unfortunately it can inhibit the expression of only one or two genes (drugs like RXi-109 and STP-705), that is not enough for scar free healing, unfortunately the best thing that we can expect from biotechnology in 2010s is scarless healing. But you said earlier that information mechanism of scar free healing will not be understood during our lifetime, you're not right about that, that is IT and that will have a rapid progress in the future, IT was the fastest growing technology during the last few decades while all other technologies were generally stagnant, Moore's law states that the power of everything that has to do with IT doubles every year while the price drops by half, so Moore's law applies not only to computer processors but to every technology that has to do with the collection, processing and storage of data, so it applies to many different IT stuffs like genome sequencing or brain scanning technologies (fMRI), here you can see it:
http://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts/
So the conclusion is that the understanding of information mechanism of scar free healing will advance rapidly in the future because it is not 'hit or miss medicine', it is actually IT, those guys from the UoK and UoF are doing very nice job (although those are only basic research) and Kurzweil predicts that biotechnology will reach full maturity in 2020s (that means somewhere between 2020 and 2030) so biotechnology will be able to accomplish scar free healing somewhere in 2020s, not before, during this decade the only appropriate approach that can accomplish scar free healing is by using scaffolds like dextran hydrogel.
The dextran hydrogel, which is digested by the mammal neutrophils in under 7days, also in an 8020 ratio, got complete scar free healing, a cited fact which established a scar free healing result, it got complete regeneration. It regenerated appendages, appendages do not grow in scar tissue (just like water freezes at 0). The control on the other hand, behaved like it usually does, in its default response with regards to mammal tissue, it degraded slow and scarred.
There have been examples and precedents on this thread of devices being approved within months, there is also new legislation coming out. All the dextran does is get digested by the whitblood cells, rapidly, the body then reepithilizes.
so, when hydrogel is on sale?
Maybe 2013.
We haven't even hit large animal trials, let alone human trials. IF it works on humans the same way it does on mice, then we may see it in a few years.
I thought someone said that it could be approved in a year or less. Remember now, if it does work it's going to come to fruition faster than other things would as it's classified as a device and not as a drug, if I remember correctly.
so, when hydrogel is on sale?
Maybe 2013.
We haven't even hit large animal trials, let alone human trials. IF it works on humans the same way it does on mice, then we may see it in a few years.
I thought someone said that it could be approved in a year or less. Remember now, if it does work it's going to come to fruition faster than other things would as it's classified as a device and not as a drug, if I remember correctly.
Really? My bad. Well in either case, I should suspect large animal trials and human trials to take a couple years at least. Usually there are three phases of human trials, each separated by some number of months... they'd also need funding for human trials as well. It's a long ways away imo. Or did one of the researchers explicitly state that it would take only 1 year with all research, funding, FDA applications and processes considered?