Cancer Center at Illinois researchers aim to help patients heal faster

URBANA, Ill. (WCIA) — Certain types of surgeries may leave you with a big scar or wound. That’s often the case with cancer patients, but a team of researchers from the Cancer Center at Illinois wants to change that by making the healing process as pain-free as possible.

Joseph Irudayaraj, the Shared Resources Associate Director at the Cancer Center, and his team of U of I researchers started developing a new type of hydrogel.

When wounds are healing, he said they are deprived of oxygen and the cells can’t grow as fast as they should. This gel would change that. Oxygen nanobubbles connect to particles, release oxygen and help with the healing process.

“This will accelerate wound healing,” Irudayaraj said.

The university said 6.5 million people in the U.S. deal with poor wound healing. Sometimes it can take a week or two; Irudayaraj wants to reduce that by half.

“Hopefully, it’ll be a scarless tissue at the end of the day,” he explained.

The cancer researcher has worked on this specific technology for about two-and-a-half years. They’ve been testing it on animals, but he’s ready to take it to the next step and help patients.

That means filing documents for FDA approval and getting closer to using it in clinical trials. That process can take six to 12 months, Irudayaraj said.

No matter what, his goal stays the same. Irudayaraj wants to improve the quality of life for those who are already going through so much.

“We want to ensure that what we do in research is impactful and it impacts people,” he elaborated. “That is the space we are in right now, and we are trying to do what we can to bridge that gap.”

So far, they’ve developed a gel and a patch. If this gets approved, Irudayaraj said it can be used two different ways: one where surgeons can put it on a wound right away and another that can be used on a scar during the healing process.

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