SMITe - The Concept: Our Path
A Project is Born
We are delighted to say that from it’s inception, our project has benefitted from being a truly shared endeavour; one which we cannot wait to show you.
Following initial selection of the team members, we undertook a series of small group exercises which merged team building with the generation of new ideas. Once these were narrowed down to several per group, we tested the ease with which each group could present an unknown idea to the rest of the team. This was a very revealing experiment in terms of the generalisability of an idea, as well as how marketable each one could be.
It became clear rapidly that the team were stuck between a focus on biomaterials and health, and it was alongside the opportunity to work with recombinant spider silk that our final project plan evolved, joining these two fields perfectly.
Chronic Wounds
Chronic wounds are a major source of disability and high cost for healthcare systems worldwide, not to mention pain, misery and the continual threat of infection for the affected individual. Referred to as a “snowballing threat to public health”, chronic wound sufferers have been aptly described as “carriers of a silent epidemic”, who are often already diagnosed with “highly branded” diseases including diabetes and obesity. [1] In the current context of these conditions twinned with an aging population, the trend in chronic wounds is set only to rise. We decided to approach this clinical problem using Staphylococcus aureus biofilm as a model. Since this organism is part of our skin flora, it benefits from easy access to broken skin and easily becomes established in non healing wounds; it is suggested that S.aureus is present in more than 90% chronic wounds. [2]
A Look Beyond
In addition, questions on a pressing global public health threat are raised by our project: antimicrobial resistance. It is well established that bacterial biofilms, fostered by the chronic wound environment, protect bacteria from both antibiotics and an individual’s immune system, generating the perfect backdrop for increasing drug resistance. [1] We could not fail to acknowledge the intrinsic link between this world issue and our project plan and as such made it the focus of our final Human Practices and Safety theme.
References
1. Sen, C.K., Gordillo, G.M., Roy, S. et al. Human Skin Wounds: A Major and Snowballing Threat to Public Health and the Economy. Wound Repair Regen. 17(6):763-771 (2009)
2. Gjodsbol, K., Christensen, J.J., Karlsmark, T. et al. Multiple bacterial species reside in chronic wounds: a longitudinal study. Int Wound J. 3(3):225-231 (2006)
