Angel Andrés Castro Ruiz, an employee of Tæknisetur, and Sigríður Guðrún Suman, professor at the Faculty of Physical Sciences, received an incentive award from the University of Iceland for the project Bandage made of two layers of scaffolding that measures healing of wounds/ulcers. It is done in collaboration with Gissur Örlygsson and Lorenzo Moroni, professor at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.
Chronic wounds/ulcers are a common problem associated with aging-related diseases, especially in those with diabetes, pressure wounds/ulcers, obesity, or vascular disease. Daily monitoring is essential in the treatment of invasive wounds/ulcers, and the condition of the wounds/ulcers is assessed subjectively. Such an evaluation process is therefore often qualitative and leads to inconsistencies in the healing process.
In the project, wound dressings are developed that use a chemical response to monitor the healing process in a wound/ulcer. It allows users to objectively diagnose wounds/ulcers and their development in real time through a smartphone app. The intended wound dressing is a two-layer network of scaffolds made of polyester and poly(ester-b-carbonate) copolymers, where the basic units come from biomass and are biocompatible and biodegradable. This solution therefore also has the social benefit of transforming a waste stream into biodegradable polymers.