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Have you guys ever thought that scarless healing might be suppressed by the large pharmaceutical companies/government (FDA) if it does exists?
I am not trying to dampen anyone's mood and it may seems absurd but I can assure you that it's not.
I can give you an analogy, lets say that scientists discover a cheap alternative to oil, The oil companies would do anything to stop such technology from being known to public as it would obviously hinder their profits and might even cause their downfall. From the government perspective, it would also cause such turmoil from loss of jobs in the oil industry and then collapse of the economy that they would not let it happen.
Again, to put into perspective, if the technology for healing wounds without scars is real then the aesthetic industry would be out of business, If people continue to have scars then we would repeatedly go back for laser treatments, dermabrasions etc. Companies spend a lot on research and development of their products but things like wrinkle-free creams would also not be needed then already.
On another happier note, we have taken huge steps into making scarless healing a reality. I remembered a few years ago, there was Acell which is an artifical extracellular matrix (ECM), what it does was it acts as a framework for the skin to grow into and there were case studies of horses and dogs regrowing skin in full thickness wounds. Their fur grew back and this was evidence that there wasn't any scarring as hair follicles do not grow on scars. Now we have scientists in China healing full thickness mice wounds. It all seems like a step in the right direction, We can only hope for a better future.
http://www.mrs.org/h...l-heals-wounds/
Hydrogel material speeds burn wound healing with complete skin regeneration
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have taken a step toward improving the lives of third-degree-burn victims by developing a dextran-hydrogel-based material that speeds the healing process and improves the functional quality of regenerated skin. When tested on mice, the hydrogel enabled the quick growth of new blood vessels necessary to promote healing in these deep wounds, without the use of biological additives. (These trials on mice do not guarantee that this treatment will work on humans; further trials on larger animals are scheduled before human testing can even be considered.)
The dextran hydrogels themselves were modified with amine groups, but we did not add any bioactive moleculesno cells, no cytokines [proteins released by cells], no growth factors, says Sharon Gerecht of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the university, the lead researcher on the project. Her group worked closely with John W. Harmon of the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins to ensure their procedure followed strict clinical guidelines and introduced no complicating variables.
The research, reported recently in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, follows up on previous work in which Gerechts group first added different functional groups to the dextran polymer and found that amine groups increased the interaction of the polymer with cells, both in vitro and in vivo. Next, they worked to optimize the amount of amine groups in the material. This resulted in a dextran-allyl isocyanate-ethylamine (Dex-AE)/polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEDGA) hydrogel with enough structural integrity to be used as a scaffold for regenerating skin, but with a loose interior architecture that allowed the cells and proteins necessary for burn healing to penetrate it.
Burn healing is a complex process that starts with the influx of inflammatory cells to the wound site. Among other things, these cells stimulate the release of growth factors that help new blood vessels to form. These blood vessels carry oxygen and nutrients to the damaged area. By comparing the rate of burn healing using scaffolds made of their dextran hydrogel, another dextran hydrogel with more crosslinking PEGDA that tightened up the structure, and the state-of-the-art clinical treatment that uses a cross-linked bovine tendon collagen and glycosaminoglycan matrix as a control, the researchers determined that this initial inflammatory step was key to the process.
We found that with the dextran hydrogel with more PEGDA as a crosslinker, the inflammatory cells were not penetrating as fast, not degrading the material as fast, therefore the response was slower, Gerecht explains. Eventual degradation of the scaffold material is necessary so that it can be replaced by skin cells, blood vessels, glands, and other components of normal skin. With the clinical control scaffold, the inflammatory cells were initially unable to penetrate the scaffold, so they accumulated in the boundary between the wound and the scaffold. In all three cases the inflammatory cells eventually penetrated the scaffolds and began the healing process, but the faster penetration in dextran hydrogel led to faster and more complete healing, including the regrowth of hair over the wound site.
In the absence of a comprehensive understanding of what is happening in these experiments, Gerecht is careful not to attribute their success to one property of the dextran hydrogel, such as the degree of crosslinking, pore size, or stiffness. We think it is a combination of the structure of the material and the composition that allows the inflammatory cells to penetrate the hydrogel and start the regeneration processwe think that is the key thing, basically, she concludes.
Guoming Sun, Xianjie Zhang, Yu-I Shen, Raul Sebastian, Laura E. Dickinson, Karen Fox-Talbot, Maura Reinblatt, Charles Steenbergen, John W. Harmon, and Sharon Gerecht, Published online before print December 14, 2011, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1115973108
PNAS December 14, 2011
What are Dex-AE and PEGDA, does anyone know?
PEGDA is polyethylene glycol diacrylate
Dex-AE is Dextran-allyl isocyanate-ethylamine
Have you guys ever thought that scarless healing might be suppressed by the large pharmaceutical companies/government (FDA) if it does exists?
I am not trying to dampen anyone's mood and it may seems absurd but I can assure you that it's not.
I can give you an analogy, lets say that scientists discover a cheap alternative to oil, The oil companies would do anything to stop such technology from being known to public as it would obviously hinder their profits and might even cause their downfall. From the government perspective, it would also cause such turmoil from loss of jobs in the oil industry and then collapse of the economy that they would not let it happen.
Again, to put into perspective, if the technology for healing wounds without scars is real then the aesthetic industry would be out of business, If people continue to have scars then we would repeatedly go back for laser treatments, dermabrasions etc. Companies spend a lot on research and development of their products but things like wrinkle-free creams would also not be needed then already.
On another happier note, we have taken huge steps into making scarless healing a reality. I remembered a few years ago, there was Acell which is an artifical extracellular matrix (ECM), what it does was it acts as a framework for the skin to grow into and there were case studies of horses and dogs regrowing skin in full thickness wounds. Their fur grew back and this was evidence that there wasn't any scarring as hair follicles do not grow on scars. Now we have scientists in China healing full thickness mice wounds. It all seems like a step in the right direction, We can only hope for a better future.
i completely agree with this... technology exists...thats for sure..and keeps growing..but private profit will always be an obstacle...
in your oil example,why we still dont use cars that are using friendly energy to the enviroment ...instead people continue using cars moving with oil...thats so ridiculus...thats so hypocritic and ironic especially when media highlight the global warming phenomenon...
technology exists and it is there..period... it depends on us to completel reject this fucking system! i dont want this to sound like political conversation
but it is really relevant to our subject ...how this system doesnt like solving problems=scarless healing
hydrogel recipe already have, just track down a scientist or biologist or researcher and see if he can create a copy of hydrogel, look at universities or research centers should not be difficult.
is easier than you think ... can have your copy of hydrogel for this year if they wish, the hydrogel recipe seabs copy it a few pages back. Find out each in different countries, and then the researcher to accept the offer, make an order of several centimeters in hydrogels in several international parcel (that depends on how many users are interested in buying and the needs of each). then each receives its hydrogels, stores them on your refrigerator (if necessary, it is not), and brings it to your plastic surgeon and make your scar revision, and then comes here and says if he or Scar Reduction .
Have you guys ever thought that scarless healing might be suppressed by the large pharmaceutical companies/government (FDA) if it does exists?
I am not trying to dampen anyone's mood and it may seems absurd but I can assure you that it's not.
I can give you an analogy, lets say that scientists discover a cheap alternative to oil, The oil companies would do anything to stop such technology from being known to public as it would obviously hinder their profits and might even cause their downfall. From the government perspective, it would also cause such turmoil from loss of jobs in the oil industry and then collapse of the economy that they would not let it happen.
Again, to put into perspective, if the technology for healing wounds without scars is real then the aesthetic industry would be out of business, If people continue to have scars then we would repeatedly go back for laser treatments, dermabrasions etc. Companies spend a lot on research and development of their products but things like wrinkle-free creams would also not be needed then already.
On another happier note, we have taken huge steps into making scarless healing a reality. I remembered a few years ago, there was Acell which is an artifical extracellular matrix (ECM), what it does was it acts as a framework for the skin to grow into and there were case studies of horses and dogs regrowing skin in full thickness wounds. Their fur grew back and this was evidence that there wasn't any scarring as hair follicles do not grow on scars. Now we have scientists in China healing full thickness mice wounds. It all seems like a step in the right direction, We can only hope for a better future.
If the technology for healing wounds without scars existed, the aesthetic industry would be the first ones to cheer. Trust me. Scarless plastic surgery would be a green machine.
I'm in agreement with scarminator. No way it makes any sense for this to get suppressed. If the cosmetics industry could promise absolutely scar free procedures think about how many more people would do it. Plus, what's the downside for big pharma in terms of this coming to fruition. It's not like cancer where a cure all would erase years of profits they make off current treatment. Right now there is only surgery, insulin injections, compression pad etc. to deal with the issue and it only improves scarring. People like us aren't interested in marginal improvements so they're already missing out on a ton of money right there. And it's not as if taking care of the scars you have now would address scars in the future. You'd still need to go through the procedure again unless we're talking about nanobots and I think we're a long way from that.
Anyway, in my opinion the benefits to big pharma and private investment far outweigh any negatives to make it's suppression plausible or anything but counter-productive to their interests.
In terms of finding someone independently to create the hydrogel and apply to skirt the issue of approval and testing, I think it's possible that you might be able to find someone. However, they'd probably charge you an obscene amount of money. Not only would they be risking their integrity as a scientist/doctor but they'd also have the very real threat of patent lawsuits coming their way. That stuff doesn't matter to us but it matters to someone who values their career as a researcher in this field.
Well OK: is there anyone here who is Chinese or who speaks Chinese language to help us???
Halo. I happen to be a chinese. lol
Hello Anthonytong and welcome!
We believe that researchers from the PLA General Hospital in Beijing have made a significant breakthrough in the treatment of wounds as they claim they were successful in regenerating epidermis (the most outer layer of the skin) and skin appendages - hair follicles, sebaceous glands and sweat glands, as you maybe know those are very complex structures that normally do not grow in the scar tissue.
http://ijl.sagepub.c.../4/264.abstract
And it is also worth mentioning that the wounds on their mice were full thickness excisions (the worst possible kind of wounds) 10mm in diameter which means it was even larger that the wounds made by JHU researches that were 8mm in diameter.
And I can say thanks God it was discovered in China and not in the US since if it was discovered in the US it wouldn't be available to patients for a long time, most probably not before 2020 (the problem is the FDA), for example you can see that this company from the US plans to outsource clinical trials of its new scarless skin healing drug to China:
http://a216530356.oi..._d275057937.htm
Now the problem is that we don't have any additional information about their plans for the future, we need inside information, so you can see how chuckstonchew got in touch with researches from the Johns Hopkins University, we need someone to mak
a contact with researches from the PLA General Hospital and it would be the best if there is someone who knows fluent Chinese to do so, but of course the contact should be professional, do you think you can do that?
I am willing to help and will try my best. But the problem is the "new method" seems to use mesenchymal stem cell which is still not fully understood. So maybe it works but there's still a long road until it will appear in the market.
Thanks because you're interested to help!
And I guess that no one here has an illusion that we will have a scar free healing solution in a month or so, but hopefully we will have a solution in about 2 to 5 years, if there is something that can regenerate epidermis and all skin appendages (sebaceous glands, hair follicles and sweat glands) on a FTE wound then it is a significant breakthrough, here is their e-mail, show some initiative but be decent.
Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China
Xiaobing Fu, Wound Healing and Cell Biology Laboratory, College of Life Science, Chinese PLA General Hospital, 28 Fu Xing Road, Beijing 100853, P R China Email: fuxiaobing@vip.sina.com
I don't know if every researcher has his own e-mail? And have any of you bought that article already?
Well OK: is there anyone here who is Chinese or who speaks Chinese language to help us???
Halo. I happen to be a chinese. lol
Hello Anthonytong and welcome!
We believe that researchers from the PLA General Hospital in Beijing have made a significant breakthrough in the treatment of wounds as they claim they were successful in regenerating epidermis (the most outer layer of the skin) and skin appendages - hair follicles, sebaceous glands and sweat glands, as you maybe know those are very complex structures that normally do not grow in the scar tissue.
http://ijl.sagepub.c.../4/264.abstract
And it is also worth mentioning that the wounds on their mice were full thickness excisions (the worst possible kind of wounds) 10mm in diameter which means it was even larger that the wounds made by JHU researches that were 8mm in diameter.
And I can say thanks God it was discovered in China and not in the US since if it was discovered in the US it wouldn't be available to patients for a long time, most probably not before 2020 (the problem is the FDA), for example you can see that this company from the US plans to outsource clinical trials of its new scarless skin healing drug to China:
http://a216530356.oi..._d275057937.htm
Now the problem is that we don't have any additional information about their plans for the future, we need inside information, so you can see how chuckstonchew got in touch with researches from the Johns Hopkins University, we need someone to mak
a contact with researches from the PLA General Hospital and it would be the best if there is someone who knows fluent Chinese to do so, but of course the contact should be professional, do you think you can do that?
I am willing to help and will try my best. But the problem is the "new method" seems to use mesenchymal stem cell which is still not fully understood. So maybe it works but there's still a long road until it will appear in the market.
Thanks because you're interested to help!
And I guess that no one here has an illusion that we will have a scar free healing solution in a month or so, but hopefully we will have a solution in about 2 to 5 years, if there is something that can regenerate epidermis and all skin appendages (sebaceous glands, hair follicles and sweat glands) on a FTE wound then it is a significant breakthrough, here is their e-mail, show some initiative but be decent.
Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China
Xiaobing Fu, Wound Healing and Cell Biology Laboratory, College of Life Science, Chinese PLA General Hospital, 28 Fu Xing Road, Beijing 100853, P R China Email: fuxiaobing@vip.sina.com
I don't know if every researcher has his own e-mail? And have any of you bought that article already?
I have sent an email to the researchers.
Hey, just wanted to let everyone know that I emailed Dr. Guoming Sun with Gerecht's lab and got a response. I think chuckstonchew had said he was let go before but it looks like he's back! Or at least his email account is active again.
Anyway, I just sent a test one but I can send a more in-depth email to him if you guys like.
Hey, just wanted to let everyone know that I emailed Dr. Guoming Sun with Gerecht's lab and got a response. I think chuckstonchew had said he was let go before but it looks like he's back! Or at least his email account is active again.
Anyway, I just sent a test one but I can send a more in-depth email to him if you guys like.
I'm still in contact with Dr Sun as well. He works at Columbia University now.
I actually spoke with him yesterday. I was waiting to post anything here because I was waiting for a response from Dr. Harmon. But... I fear it may not come...
Yesterday - Dr Sun says he has no idea if JH has gathered funding and that he longer has interest in being involved with them or the dextran hydrogel. This was very surprising to me. He says there is just a lot of 'intellectual property issues' with the project and he doesn't want to be involved with it anymore. He put 10 years of work into the dextran hydrogel. He was the main developer and now it seems he's been run off due to some political BS and funding BS.
Now he says he's working on new methods of scarless healing at Columbia. A new hydrogel system possibly. But he hasn't had any success as of yet. He did say that the original dextran hydrogel is still a good candidate for scarless healing though... But he just isn't sure of its future and since JH owns the rights to it (even though he primarily developed it) he can't do anything about it.
Also - As I said, I wanted to speak with Dr. Harmon again this week. I emailed him early yesterday morning and have yet to get a response. I fear that he will not email me back... I emailed him in early December as well and he never responded. The various times we spoke throughout last year went extremely well and he always seemed very interested in what our group had to offer and he was very willing to talk. He did, however, say that his team (Gerecht et al.) didn't see or understand how useful our group could be. He said he was going to try to talk to them more about it though. It seems they may have talked him out of it or he has changed his view for some reason. Either way, he's not communicating with me like he used to. I don't like this at all......
Gerecht has never emailed anyone back, ever (anyone?). Harmon seems to now be following this course now as well. Sun, the primary developer who has been working on the dextran hydrogel for a decade was let go and has claimed that he no longer has any interest in being involved with it over some lame intellectual property issues. Politics as usual, which seem to have been given precedence over helping people in need. Not to mention the politics behind all of the funding crap. It's all just a shame really, the way the system works... 
............
edit:
Pardon my pessimism and frustration. For all I know Harmon and company got the funding they needed and have been diligently working on progressing the hydrogel and thus haven't had time to answer emails. I don't know. I just hate feeling in the dark. Especially when I felt like we were so close...
Well you say that Dr Sun says there is a lot of 'intellectual property issues' with the project and that 'he has no longer interest in being involved' with the rest of the team, maybe the three of them are in some kind of dispute on each other over the question who will have financial benefits from a commercialization of the dextran hydrogel but they don't want to tell you, maybe it is the problem that is now stopping the whole project? 
Ðhings are really so fuzzy and confusing.
Well you say that Dr Sun says there is a lot of 'intellectual property issues' with the project and that 'he has no longer interest in being involved' with the rest of the team, maybe the three of them are in some kind of dispute on each other over the question who will have financial benefits from a commercialization of the dextran hydrogel but they don't want to tell you, maybe it is the problem that is now stopping the whole project?
I don't think there is any question regarding this anymore. Johns Hopkins owns the patent on the hydrogel. Sun does not. Sun is no longer at Johns Hopkins so he no longer has any rights to it. There may have been an initial dispute, of this I can't say, but if so it's over now. The way Sun explained it he's completely out of the picture and has moved on. This shouldn't stop Gerecht and others from continuing...
I don't know, but I can see on his LinkedIn profile that he doesn't miss to mention that he once worked on the hydrogel which is able to regenerate hair follicles and glands that is significantly better than standard products that are used in clinics.
http://www.linkedin....-sun/10/631/b89
Guoming Sun's Experience
Associate Research Scientist
Columbia University Medical Center
Educational Institution; 10,001+ employees; Hospital & Health Care industry
September 2012 Present (5 months)
Biomaterial, Tissue repair and regeneration, controlled release.
Assistant Research Scientist
Johns Hopkins University
Educational Institution; 10,001+ employees; Higher Education industry
October 2011 September 2012 (1 year)
Work on biomaterials for vascular engineering, skin regeneration, burn wound healing,stem cell, drug delivery.
MSCRF (Postdoctoral) Fellow
Johns Hopkins University
Educational Institution; 10,001+ employees; Higher Education industry
October 2007 September 2011 (4 years)
My recent work on biomaterials for skin regeneration outperforms the state-of-the-art product used in clinic,and it bring back the whole skin layer,including hair follicle and glands.
Research assistant
Cornell University
Educational Institution; 10,001+ employees; Higher Education industry
August 2001 August 2007 (6 years 1 month) Ithaca, New York Area
Hello everyone. Im glad to come across this board. I had tried to contact Gerecht proir to finding this site, with no success. I am interested in the dextran hydrogel in regards to a full thickness raised birthmark. Out of curiousity i was searching for the patent application that Maldition mentioned and found it here:
http://patentscope.w...&tab=PCT Biblio
Things appear to have not changed for a long while in regards to what you have heard from the staff at John Hopkins but i await eagerly for more!
Also i think setting up a group (as mentioned earlier) such as a yahoo group where you may get more support, such as people with birthmarks, other wounds etc....might be a great idea too
Great find wentworthwhile. In looking over the documents section of the patent I noticed that it was filed on June 30th, 2011 and just a day ago a preliminary report was issued...My god, talk about a snail's pace. A year and a half ago it was filed and they're just now getting to a preliminary report? I understand that patent offices are properly overworked and understaffed and that it's the kind of work that needs to be done in a thorough way, but that just seems outrageous.
In all likelihood this is the cause of a lot of the hangups. Right now, no one has received an international patent for the hydrogel. I'm not exactly sure about all the other DoD funded projects dealing with regenerative medicine but I'd be willing to bet that almost all of them (if not all of them) have researchers who hold a unique patent on their device. Sun probably got frustrated waiting around for the patent to come through and decided to do his own thing. And who knows, maybe him and Gerecht got into over percentages, patent rights, credit etc.
I thought someone previously posted a link to a patent application that was submitted by Dr. Gerecht and not Johns Hopkins but I could be mistaken. The lack of novel patent is also likely one of the reasons private investors haven't jumped on board even if some were interested. They don't want to have to worry about manufacturing, distribution and production while also fearing that a competitor could come along and do it for a better profit margin. They just want to get in with someone who holds the patent and then rake in their percentage once other companies pay the patent fees to produce and sell the hydrogel.
maldition, if you can find a willing party to produce and effectively (and safely) administer the hydrogel, I'm sure we'd be all ears. I'd try to find someone but I don't know where to look and can't imagine there'd be many takers given the risks and legal issues. You'd need to find someone extremely altruistic because they would stand to gain little (except for pay from people like us) in the long run.
golfpanther i havent had a chance to have a good look as im posting from my phone atm but i did a quick search of Gerecht on that same site and it seems there are a few similar applications from her, and a search of Guoming brought up many unrelated applications! I know hes no longer involved in the study but it could be an indication that they all have there fingers in too many pies to be as wrapped up in it as we sufferers are. Doh!...im not trying to convince myself that this isnt going ahead
maldition, if you can find a willing party to produce and effectively (and safely) administer the hydrogel, I'm sure we'd be all ears. I'd try to find someone but I don't know where to look and can't imagine there'd be many takers given the risks and legal issues. You'd need to find someone extremely altruistic because they would stand to gain little (except for pay from people like us) in the long run.
yes, I will try
Today I have two unique hopes, a hydrogel , and the other the old antibiotic (nefopam, the Canadian method), but this method only reduces the scar by 50% and is aimed more at those who have hypertrophic scar.
what state you see this patent? See if you find something on this patent I want to know how this product for sale stage:
http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Method-treating-scars-catenin-mediated/WO2011072394.html
we must begin to operate, and I am contacting scientists.
Example 9: Topical Nefopam decreases normal scar size in mice.
[0069] Cutaneous wounds were generated in Tcf mice using the biopsy punch procedure described above. 6mm diameter full thickness punch wounds were treated topically with either control cream of 1% Nefopam cream twice daily for up to 21 days. It was observed that Nefopam treatment resulted in a reduction in scar size by approximately one third compared to controls. Table 1 indicates the average normal wound size (measured in mm) in a mouse model at day 0 and following 21 days of daily topical administration of either 1% Nefopam cream formulated in petrolatum carrier or carrier alone control cream. Averages are provided for 4 wounds per group. Table 1.
[0070] 4mm punch wounds were generated in Tcf mice which were then treated topically with one of 1% Nefopam cream or control cream twice daily for 14 days. The surface areas of scars formed after 14 days of treatment were measured using arbitrary units, where 100 arbitrary units represents the control cream treatment. Ten wounds were measured for each treatment and data presented as mean and standard deviation. It was observed that scars in mice receiving Nefopam treatment were significantly smaller than those subjected to control treatment (p<0.05) where control treatment is 0% Nefopam (see Figure 10).
[0071] While this invention has been described with reference to illustrative embodiments and examples, the description is not intended to be construed in a limiting sense. Thus, various modification of the illustrative embodiments, as well as other embodiments of the invention, will be apparent to persons skilled in the art upon reference to this description. It is therefore contemplated that the appended claims will cover any such modifications or embodiments. Further, all of the claims are hereby incorporated by reference into the description of the preferred embodiments.
[0072] Any publications, patents and patent applications referred to herein are incorporated by reference in their entirety to the same extent as if each individual publication, patent or patent application was specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference in its entirety.
maldition, if you can find a willing party to produce and effectively (and safely) administer the hydrogel, I'm sure we'd be all ears. I'd try to find someone but I don't know where to look and can't imagine there'd be many takers given the risks and legal issues. You'd need to find someone extremely altruistic because they would stand to gain little (except for pay from people like us) in the long run.
Question for everyone... Does anyone know a significant amount about the way patents work? From my prior understanding, patents are only valid in the countries that the patent application is filed? So there technically wouldn't be any risks or legal issues involved for someone who isn't in the US... I didn't think there was such thing as international patents... I could be wrong though. What is everyone's knowledge pertaining to this?
............
Hm. Now I just looked at the patent that was posted and the website is 'PCT The International Patent System'. Dang...
............
On second thought, this website confirms that there in fact is no such as an international patent and gives more details on WIPO.
http://www.patentlens.net/daisy/patentlens/ip/around-the-world.html
Maybe we can find a loophole.