Noveratech LLC of Louisville has been developing a totally new dressing for wound care (ATP-vesicles or VitaSolTM) by focusing on the most critical factor hindering healing--tissue ischemia. Most non-healing chronic wounds, such as diabetic foot ulcers, are affected by macro- and micro-vascular disease. The tissue within the wound does not receive adequate blood, oxygen, and nutrition to combat microbial invasion and facilitate healing. By providing the most critical factor in tissue metabolism (adenosine triphosphate or ATP), acute wounds heal faster and chronic wounds have the opportunity to heal.
The traditional wound healing process has a 3-6-day lag time during which no new tissue is generated (top panel in figure). Despite almost a century of extensive research and thousands of types of dressings which have been developed, no one has ever been able to change this. This includes the only FDA-approved prescription growth factor, Regranex (middle panel in figure).
When VitaSolTM is used, granulation tissue appears within 24 hours and sometimes covers the entire wound cavity within a few days (bottom panel in figure), a phenomenon previously never seen or reported with any other treatment.
In medicine, an extremely rapid tissue growth is not always beneficial as it might result in out-of-control growth. Tumorigenesis is one example. Our growth is even faster than any tumorigenic growth. We have not; however, observed any unusual growth over 2 years in animals and over more than 9 years in limited observations in human volunteers.