Biologics Placement Student - Deeside, United Kingdom - ConvaTec

ConvaTec

Verified Company

Deeside, United Kingdom

2 weeks ago

Posted by:

Tom O´Connor

beBee Recruiter

Description

At ConvaTec, our vision is pioneering trusted medical solutions to improve the lives we touch.

We are a global medical products and technologies business focused on serving people and care givers in the areas of advanced wound care, ostomy care, continence and critical care and infusion care.

We devise, develop and manufacture products and services that support people with deeply personal and challenging medical conditions, helping to improve care for them and giving them greater confidence, freedom and mobility.

We are guided by our five core values that shape the way we work, every day: Improve care, deliver results, grow together, own it and do what's right.

We are a global Group, with over 10,000 employees and operate in over 100 countries.

You'll be pushed to think bigger and aim for excellence. Your ideas will be heard, and you'll be supported to bring them to life. There'll be challenges. But stretch yourself and embrace the opportunities, and you could make your biggest impact yet.

This is stepping outside of your comfort zone.

This is work that'll move you.

Project Scope

Over 40 million patients worldwide are affected with chronic wounds. These wounds can range from pressure ulcers, to venous ulcer, and diabetic ulcers.

Not only are chronic wounds incredibly painful for patients, significantly diminishing their quality of life, but they also require long-term treatment at high costs.

The annual healthcare burden associated with their treatment is estimated to be in excess of $25 billion.

Despite these high costs, reported recurrence rates for chronic wounds remain extremely high.

The reason for their recurrence is due to the inability of the chronic wound to progress through the normal wound healing stages of haemostasis, inflammation, proliferation and matrix remodelling.

The mechanisms of chronic wound‐healing are poorly understood, although dysfunctional inflammation and macrophage behaviour have been strongly implicated, as have the imbalance of pH, proteases and inhibitors in the chronic wound bed.

Current clinical methods for treating chronic wounds include debridement, orthopaedics, casting, negative pressure treatment, and infection treatment. For local wound care, modern wound dressings are applied to promote a moist environment.

These methods whilst effective in some regards have drawbacks such as high medical costs, additional pain to patients and in most cases limited success in fully restoring structure and function to the affected wound area.

Therefore, there is a critical need to develop alternative methods for chronic wound treatment.

Tissue engineering is an emerging field used extensively for the purpose of restoring, replacing or regenerating damaged tissue by using a combination of scaffolds and cells.

Scaffolds, typically made from either natural (cellulose, chitosan) or synthetic (polycaprolactone, PLGA) biomaterial provides the structural support, topography and cues for cell attachment and proliferation.

Furthermore, scaffolds can provide a bio-inductive environment for chronic

wounds by modulating the proteolytic climate and/or supplementing the wound bed with exogenous, bioactive factors that can help stimulate tissue regeneration.

Aim

Experimental Objectives

To investigate and compare the cellular and enzymatic interactions between nanofiber scaffolds and skin cells (fibroblasts and keratinocytes) under normal and chronic wound conditions.

Scaffolds with various fibrous structure and pore sizes will be quantitatively and qualitatively analysed to determine which scaffold is the most appropriate for chronic wound healing.

Example scaffolds include:

Animal based gelatin
Fish based gelatin
Zein
Chitosan
PLGA
Polycalprolactone
Hyaluronic acid
Carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC)

Experimental design

Assess scaffolds seeded with skin cells under normal conditions (establish a baseline of cytotoxicity, cell viability and cell morphology).

Techniques used to achieve this will include ATP cytotoxicity / viability assay, confocal imaging (F-actin, α-tubulin and vinculin staining to visualise cells cytoskeleton & DAPI staining for cell nucleus), SEM imaging (to assess cell morphology and scaffold structure), ELISA (to test for pro-inflammatory cytokines or protein signals of inflammatory response IL-1α, IL-6 and IL-8).

Assess scaffolds seeded with cells under alkaline conditions.

Culture cells onto scaffold under alkaline conditions (pH by using alkaline culture media (adding potassium hydroxide solution 1.0 N to normal cell culture media) and assess cytotoxicity, cell viability and cell morphology.

Assess degradation rate of scaffolds with enzymatic activity.

Analyse the degradation rate of the scaffolds when combined with enzymes (lysozyme, hyaluronidase and collagenase I). Determine the degradation rates from the weight of residual scaffolds, expressed as a percentage of the original weight.