The University of Virginia Patent Foundation has licensed innovative U.Va. silver nanoparticle technology to U.Va. start-up PluroGen Therapeutics Inc. for an application as an enhanced anti-microbial means which fights infection and promotes wound-healing.
The Licensor, University of Virginia Patent Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation, getting U.Va. technologies to the global marketplace through the process of evaluation, protection and licensing intellectual property generated at U.Va.. The Licensee, PluroGen is a company commercializing its patent-protected gel technology platform in the field of wound-healing providing high quality and differentiated physical and bio-impact benefits to wound healing.
For decades, silver has been known to have anti-bacterial properties in its ionic form and has been used in the sulfadiazine creams and silver-coated medical dressings treating treat chronic wounds and burns. U.Va.'s Lakshmi S. Nair, Ph.D., and co-inventor Laurencin, Cato T. Laurencin, M.D., Ph.D., have exploited the usage of silver ions to develop novel methods to form silver nanoparticles which have the potential to make these and other treatments significantly more successful as they can be be formed in solutions, such as creams and gels, and easily integrated into coatings on metallic and polymeric substances and a patent application has been filed on the technology.
Increased surface area per volume of the silver nanoparticle, owing to it miniscule size, (being fewer than 100 nanometers, or billionths of a meter) gives it the potential to be more powerful, effective and less expensive than typical treatments involving silver ions.
Nair, an assistant professor in U.Va.'s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery states that these nanoparticles have unique properties, thus making them significantly different from the bulk material available as they exhibit enhanced biological activity for wound healing.
Technology developed at the foundation has far reaching impacts and has the potential to change the wound care industry with its wide variety of applications in different fields like nanoelectronics, catalysis, biodetection and various areas of biomedical engineering.
Company president and CEO Neal G. Koller PluroGen plans to focus their commercial efforts on the nanoparticles' antimicrobial and wound-healing properties in controlling infection in burns and chronic wounds."
