UCLA

Chronic wounds affect approximate 6.5 million individuals in the United States alone. These types of wounds are usually locked in a permanent cycle between tissue inflammation, remodeling, and breakdown without appreciable progress towards complete healing. Current methods of treatment include consistent delivery of growth factors in hopes of easing the soft tissue through the proper stages of repair. While there is evidence that dose delivery of growth factors is more desirable than continuous dosing, there are no current on-demand delivery platforms for such growth factors. Our studies show the feasibility of a duplex oligonucleotide tethering system to create a heat-sensitive linker that can release a growth factor on-demand. Our system has the ability to last for a minimum of five days and has the potential to be incorporated into other biodegradable implants for delivery.