Flexible and Disposable Plasma-Generating Wound Dressings for Pressure and Diabetic Foot Ulcers

Non-healing ulcers and chronic wounds affect ~6.5 million people in the U.S. alone. Veterans experience these complications more often than the civilian population, which significantly reduces their quality of life and productivity, and poses an enormous financial burden to the healthcare system. Here, we propose to develop a 'Band-Aid'-like device. The device will consist of a plasma-generating circuit. Plasma is many times referred to as 'fourth state of matter.' Primarily, it is a mixture of high energy ionized gases. A low-temperature plasma (LTP) has bioactive properties that kill bacteria and help cell growth by putting them under stress. Thus, LTP has found many applications in the field of medicine. Here, we aspire to develop a patch-type flexible LTP generator, which can generate plasma on demand, kill the growing bacteria on wounds, and aid faster healing.

The patch-based device will allow 'do-it-yourself' type administration of plasma, thus lowering burden on institutionalized wound-care facility and specialists. We hypothesize that the frequent application of plasma would give superior antibacterial protection than conventional plasma treatment. We aim to test the generation of ionized antibacterial molecules and their bacteria-killing strength. We will also test the devices on mice having pressure ulcers and chronic diabetic wounds. We will test these devices against the traditional benchtop plasma generators. The device would have an immediate and long-term impact on the development of point-of-care technologies and therapies. Once proven, the device will find applications to treat diverse types of wounds affecting Veterans, Service members, and the general population.