Research

Restore’s Research

Restore is working hard to improve the outcome for patients who have sustained burn injuries and other problems related to wound healing.

Latest Research Project: The Role of Stem Cells in Burn Wound Healing

Restore's latest DPhil research fellows, Jennifer Kean, Thanassi Athanassopoulos and Andreas Fox have each explored the role of stem cells in burn wound healing. Stem cells are powerful cells found naturally in more complex organisms that have the ability to replicate and change into other cell types. The fellows have explored the possibility of establishing a new blood vessel network in commercially available, artificial skin.  These skin substitutes are readily available and are used to ‘seal’ the wound, reducing the tendency for the patient to lose fluids from the open wound.  However, frequently they don’t incorporate into the burned skin and infection is common.  If we can rapidly create a new microscopic circulation within such synthetic skin, it might link up with blood vessels already present at the site of the burn, so reducing these complications.  This would allow the patient to recover more quickly. More detail on this and our other current project can be obtained by clicking here - Current Research Projects.

Previous Research Projects

Our previous research projects have been diverse and powerful in that they have always addressed burns, wound healing and scarring in human subjects.  More details on the specific themes of these projects can be found by clicking on Previous Research Projects. To give you a flavour of the papers we have published to elaborate the causes of burns injury and scarring over the last 21 years:

We were one of the first groups in the world to devise an accurate and reproducible way of assessing burn depth according to the formation of clots in blood vessels within the skin after a burn. (Andrew Watts paper, Burns 2001)

Uniquely we found that when blood vessels in the skin were damaged by a burn, it was more likely that certain blood cells could not enter the wound. The absence of these lymphocyte cells was associated with more scarring, suggesting that they are important regulators of inflammation. (Michael Tyler paper, Burns 2001)

Our fellows devised rigorous outcome measures to determine recovery after injury. One of the first areas we looked at was head and neck skin cancer but we planning a follow-on project to look at systematic means of assesssing burns. This should allow us to determine whether a new treatment has really made a diffrence to patients in comparison to existing treatments. (Stefan Cano paper, JPRAS 2006)

We have found that for the first time that skin needs to be injured to abouta third of its depth before a scar results. This has importnt implications for the assessment of burn injury and also for any treatment that attempts to resurface the skin, for example with laser therapy. The model we devised has become a powerful tool for assessing treatments for scarring in human subjects. (Chris Dunkin paper, PRS 2007)

We investigated the chemical environment on the surface of new burns in human subjects. in doing so, we showed that it is important for certain enzymes to be present to reduce any tendency for excessive number of new blood vessels to form. (Robert Caulfield paper, Burns 2008)

We showed for the first time that after a burn, the amount of stem cells that are released from the bone marrow in humans is related to the extent of the injury. This work also indicated some of the chemical signals that get released to mobilise stem cells (Andreas Fox, British Journal of Surgery 2008)

Again in completely novel work, we found that the level of nucleic acids - the molecules made famous by James Watson and Francis Crick - in human blood related to the severity of a prior burn injury. The DNA is likely to be released from injured tissue and provides a new and powerful way of assessing burn severity. (Andreas Fox, Burns 2008)

Our Research Strategy

We have recently revised our research strategy which can be accessed here

Please contact our Directors of Research - Professor Duncan McGrouther and/or Mr Jonathon Pleat c/o clerk@restore-research.org.uk  for further information.