Suresh Thallapuranam, the Mildred Cooper Chair of Bioinformatics & Biochemistry in the U of A Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has been awarded a $435,226 National Institutes of Health R15 grant to investigate a hyper-stable FGF1-FGF2 based therapeutic formulation for wound care. This three-year award will support research led by Thallapuranam, in collaboration with Kyle Quinn and Narasimhan Rajaram from the Department of Biomedical Engineering, along with Jingyi Chen from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the U of A.

Chronic skin wounds are a serious problem that affects the health and quality of life of millions of Americans and creates a significant financial burden on the entire healthcare system. Growth factors are small signaling proteins that can stimulate tissue repair but rapidly lose their bioactivity and therefore have had limited clinical effectiveness. This project focuses on developing hyper-stable growth factors and a hydrogel-based wound dressing that will enable sustained release of healing growth factors in a protective environment for improved healing of chronic wounds.

Thallapuranam and his lab, known for their expertise in developing hyper-stable FGF1 variants, will lead the advancement of a novel FGF1-FGF2 dimer, or pair. This innovative pairing of fibroblast growth factors is anticipated to significantly boost metabolic activity and accelerate wound healing.

Chen and her team will leverage their specialization in controlled-released therapeutics to create a water-absorbing gel designed for sustained delivery of the FGF1-FGF2 dimer and its variants. This "smart" polymer gel will be crucial for optimizing the therapeutic effects of the dimer over time.

Quinn's lab, with its deep knowledge of wound healing and biomedical optics, will utilize multiphoton microscopy to monitor the hydrogel treatment and its effectiveness in promoting wound healing. Cutting-edge imaging techniques will provide invaluable insights into the gel's performance in real-world conditions.

Complementing these efforts, Rajaram and his lab will apply their advanced optical spectroscopy and microscopy techniques to gauge blood flow and the formation of new blood vessels within the wound area. Through diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, they will measure oxygen saturation in the blood vessels and hemoglobin concentration, offering a detailed view of the healing process and the surrounding tissue environment.

"The team is excited to receive this NIH grant," Thallapuranam said. "It will provide valuable new data that will enable us to further research the molecular and metabolic mechanisms underlying wound healing in populations with chronic diabetes. We also hope to gain new knowledge on the therapeutic use of hyper-stable fibroblast growth factors in treating metabolic disorders such as obesity, a significant issue in Arkansas."

The NIH award was made possible through initial work previously published on the development of water-based gels made to deliver FGF1 growth factor effectively, which was supported by the U of A Chancellor's Innovation Fund, the Arkansas Biosciences Institute and the Arkansas Integrative Metabolic Research Center (AIMRC). Quinn serves as the AIMRC director; Thallapuranam serves as the AIMRC Bioenergetics Core director, and Rajaram serves as the Imaging and Spectroscopy Core director. In this NIH award, this multi-disciplinary team of investigators will take advantage of a number of imaging, spectroscopy and bioenergetics resources and equipment within the AIMRC that are available to all researchers on campus.