Wound Care Overview
Wound healing difficulties may arise from a variety of causes, such as severity of injury, age and co-morbidities such as obesity, diabetes, smoking, cardiovascular and peripheral vascular disease and other chronic conditions. The underlying etiology for different tissue healing challenges may vary. At a cellular level many of the problems with tissue healing are the same. Some of these problems are uncontrolled inflammatory processes and shortages of growth factors that are critical to healing and are part of the cell signaling pathways.
Carmell Therapeutics’ technology has been designed to deliver growth factors directly to the injured site over days and weeks to enhance and amplify the healing environment with important growth factors (PDGF, TGF-β, VEGF, IGF, FGF, EGF and others) and other regenerative factors found in platelet-enriched plasma.
Advanced Wound Care Market
Multiple Advanced Wound Care Research reports value the Global Advanced Wound Care market at $9 billion in 2021, with a CAGR of 3.5% to 4.6% over the next ten years and expected to reach over $14 billion by 2030.
The Advanced Wound Care market is sub segmented into advanced wound dressings, biologics, negative pressure wound therapy and other treatments. The biologics segment represents about a quarter of the global opportunity, about $1.5B, and is made up of skin substitutes and growth factors. GFs may be used in combination with Standard of Care (“SOC”) or skin substitutes to enhance and accelerate wound healing. Acceleration and enhancing the healing of both acute and chronic wounds is associated with significant health care savings.
Carmell Solution
Carmell’s second product candidate, THA, is formulated from the same active ingredient (API) as BHA, which is Carmell’s PBM. In a Phase II study using BHA to accelerate bone fracture healing, HEAL I, we observed that local soft tissue healing may also have been accelerated and that the risk for surgical site infection within 1 year may have been reduced relative to untreated wounds. Preclinical studies with THA have shown that it significantly promotes angiogenesis and reduces infections in bacterially contaminated surgical wounds (publication, Schwartzmann). Also, in a radiation burn model in rodents, THA substantially provided accelerated and enhanced healing (publication, Miller). The wound healing market is divided into acute and chronic, with the later accounting for most of the expenses due to the complexity and length of treatment.
Chronic Wounds
Chronic wounds are wounds that have not appropriately closed after four weeks of treatment with traditional treatment such as dressings. Chronic wounds include:
- Venous Leg Ulcers (VLUs): chronic cutaneous and deeper wounds that occur in the leg caused by localized elevated venous blood pressure with reduced local perfusion pressure with resultant reduced nutrient blood flow.
- Diabetic Foot Ulcers (DFUs) chronic cutaneous and deeper wounds in diabetic patients caused by poor tissue perfusion related to macro and microvascular arterial disease, These predominantly occur on the bottom of the foot.
- Pressure Ulcers: localized injuries to the skin and/or underlying tissues as a result reduced local nutrient circulation as a result prolonged mechanical pressure.
- Surgical Wounds: acute wounds caused by surgical incisions that become chronic wounds if they do not heal properly.