IIT Madras students develop special healer for diabetic wounds
Chennai : Researchers at IIT Madras have developed a special type of healer that can be used for treatment of normal and diabetic wounds.
Wounds of diabetic patients take more time to heal than normal patient. With continuously increasing number of diabetic patients in India, the treatment of such wounds have become a challenge for doctors too.
Prof. Vignesh Muthuvijayan, Assistant Professor, Department of Biotechnology, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, IIT Madras, focused on a low-cost wound dressings that are effective in treating diabetic wounds.
Dr. T Ponrasu, an Institute Postdoctoral Fellow, working under Prof. Vignesh Muthuvijayan’s mentorship has developed a new and rapid technique for preparing reduced graphene oxide from graphite powder.
Speaking about his research, Prof. Vignesh Muthuvijayan, Assistant Professor, Department of Biotechnology, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, IIT Madras, say, “We wanted to exploit graphene-based materials’ property of improving blood vessel formation at certain concentrations to prepare an inexpensive wound dressing. The psyllium-reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite that we prepared has shown exciting results in animal studies. We hope this is the first step towards developing inexpensive wound dressings using graphene-based materials for clinical use.”
As per research result, they have managed to make a wound dressing that accelerates the process of healing in both normal and diabetic patients.
The normal wounds treated with the dressings healed in 16 days compared to 23 days in untreated normal wounds. Similarly, the diabetic wounds treated with the dressings healed in 20 days compared to 26 days in untreated diabetic wounds. These scaffolds are easy to prepare, inexpensive, and show excellent healing properties. Thus, the material acts as a good wound dressing and helps in accelerated healing of normal and diabetic wounds.
