BRAIN Wins Patent for Biological Wound Conditioning

Within the framework of the research project “Industrial production pro-cesses for novel enzymes and bio-active substances from natural sources: MikroPro“, BRAIN has been actively engaged in several sub-projects including biological wound conditioning. This involved isolating and characterising a proteolytic enzyme from the larvae of the Common green bottle fly Lucilia sericata and developing its biotechnological production. This highly potent and specific protein-digesting enzyme (protease) will now be used for conditioning badly heal-ing wounds. According to the professional magazine “Deutsches Ärzteblatt“, about 3 million people in Germany alone suffer from badly or never healing so-called chronic wounds. These include instances of Ulcus cruris, Decubitus or Diabetic foot ulcereration. Today, chronic wounds often require long-term, cost-intensive treatments and amputations are not rare. At present, one of the difficulties of treating and healing the wound is the complete and pain-free removal of necrotic or devitalized tissue of the wound. This is where BRAIN and their method of enzymatic wound condi-tioning takes effect. “By identifying this natural functional principle we are able to introduce a completely new method for conditioning wounds“, ex-plains Dr. Frank Niehaus, program manager of Enzyme Technologies at BRAIN. “At the moment, we are working together with a number of leading partners to integrate the enzyme into innovative products as fast as pos-sible, obtain international approval and therefore launch the product within the next few months“, adds Dr. Michael Krohn, Unit Head BioActives at BRAIN.

“As a SME, the partial funding of this high-risk, highly innovative research project by the BMBF has given us the opportunity to realize project ideas that we would not have been able to pre-finance by ourselves“, says Dr. Jürgen Eck, Head of Research at BRAIN AG. “The five year term of the support measure has also given us long-term planning security, which has definitely contributed to the success of the project.“