![\"This](\"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Imbed-image15-500x333.jpeg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>Imbed Biosciences received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration to market its patented wound dressing for human use. The dressing it calls Microlyte Ag is a sheet as thin as Saran Wrap and can conform to the bumps and crevices of a wound, says company CEO Ankit Agarwal.<\/span><\/p>\n The dressing is now cleared by the FDA as a class II medical device, for prescription and over-the-counter use.<\/span><\/p>\n Like many dressings now used to treat burns and other persistent wounds, Microlyte Ag contains silver to kill bacteria \u2013 but in much smaller quantities.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSilver is an excellent antimicrobial agent,\u201d says Agarwal, a co-founder of the company in the Madison suburb Fitchburg, \u201cas it is active against a broad range of bacteria and yeast. But the large silver loads found in conventional silver dressings can be toxic to skin cells. Our dressing uses as little as 1 percent as much silver as the competition, and yet the tests we submitted to the FDA showed that Microlyte kills more than 99.99 percent of bacteria that it contacts.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \n That kill ratio even appeared in tests against some of the nastiest hospital-acquired superbugs, including methicillin-resistant\u00a0Staphylococcus<\/em>\u00a0aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococcus.<\/span><\/p>\n Microlyte overcomes a key problem with existing dressings: stiffness. Under a low-power microscope, a wound has bumps and fissures \u2014 hiding places for bacteria. The Microlyte dressing inherently adheres to moist surfaces and is so flexible that it drops into the fissures, leading to the sweet combination of greater destruction of bacteria at much lower doses of silver.<\/span><\/p>\n Microlyte has several other advantages, Agarwal says. It retains moisture yet is ultrathin and breathable, allowing oxygen to reach the wound and gases to exit, all factors that promote healing. The slow release of the silver means the dressing can remain in place for at least one day. And because the material is a hydrogel (a water-based gel), it can simply be rinsed off as needed before replacement.<\/span><\/p>\n Experience with animals shows that the ultra-thin dressing simply sloughs off as the wound heals. All of these advantages should reduce the need to change dressings, which can be so painful that sedation is needed, especially for children.<\/span><\/p>\n [pullquote]The dramatic closure of wounds that have resisted months of conventional treatment \u201csuggests that chronic bacterial contamination of the wound surface, even when it looks relatively healthy, is a significant factor inhibiting healing in many cases,\u201d McAnulty says.[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n \u201cReducing or eliminating dressing changes reduces the pain that the patient experiences,\u201d says co-founder Michael Schurr, chair of general surgery at the Mountain Area Health Education Center in Asheville, North Carolina, and adjunct professor of surgery at the University of North Carolina. \u201cIt also reduces costs in supplies and reduces the burden to the health care system that supplies visiting nurses to do the dressing changes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe are seeing in a limited number of cases that it does provide us with a remarkable new tool for dealing with chronic wounds\u201d in dogs and cats treated at the UW\u2013Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, says\u00a0Jonathan McAnulty<\/span><\/a>, chair of the Department of Surgical Sciences. \u201cWe certainly have no reason to think that this will be different with humans,\u201d adds McAnulty, who is also a company co-founder. \u201cThe principles are the same, and a lot of the problems are the same.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The dramatic closure of wounds that have resisted months of conventional treatment \u201csuggests that chronic bacterial contamination of the wound surface, even when it looks relatively healthy, is a significant factor inhibiting healing in many cases,\u201d McAnulty says. \u201cOnce we treat with our dressing, we start to see very dramatic closure of these wounds.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n McAnulty says he\u2019s starting to use Microlyte earlier in treatment. \u201cCertainly it seems appropriate for prevention of infection as well as treatment.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The ultra-thin dressing material was invented in the lab of\u00a0Nicholas Abbott<\/span><\/a>, a UW\u2013Madison professor of chemical and biological engineering, when Agarwal was a postdoctoral fellow and where he is now an honorary associate scientist.<\/span><\/p>\n The dressing will compete in the $2 billion market sector of \u201cadvanced wound dressings,\u201d which are used to treat diabetic ulcers, venous ulcers, burns, bedsores and other difficult wounds.<\/span><\/p>\n Imbed has 10 employees. The company is developing other ideas for wound treatment and discussing commercial-scale production of Microlyte. Currently, it plans to reach the market through licensing agreements with hospital suppliers.<\/span><\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Imbed Biosciences received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration to market its patented wound dressing for human use. The dressing it calls Microlyte Ag is a sheet as thin as Saran Wrap and can conform to the bumps and crevices of a wound, says company CEO Ankit Agarwal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-medicine"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",500,334,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334-150x150.jpeg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334-300x200.jpeg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",500,334,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",500,334,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",500,334,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",500,334,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",500,334,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",500,334,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",500,334,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",500,334,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",500,334,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",500,334,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",95,63,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",500,334,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",96,64,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/imbed-dressing-500x334.jpeg",150,100,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Biology<\/a> Medicine<\/a>","tag_info":"Medicine","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a>