Technology
About 3.2% of hospital patients acquire a healthcare-associated infection (HAI) and 1-2% of Americans experience chronic wounds. Of 100 million surgical procedures annually, approximately 1.9% (1.9 million) lead to Surgical Site Infections and cost hospitals $3.5-$10 billion by increasing hospital stays and readmission. Wound treatment is estimated to cost Medicare $30-$100 billion annually. As a further complication, HAIs often involve multidrug resistant (MDR) organisms, which are extremely difficult or impossible to treat with existing antibiotics. In most cases, the delayed healing of chronic wounds is due to colonization or overt infection, therefore there is significant need for preventing and actively treating infection by employing antimicrobials. According to a recent RFA posted by DHA, wound management in the line of duty is frequently complicated by multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial infections and injured troops moved to higher echelons of care were still susceptible to post-injury infections. The majority of these infections are attributed to Gram-negative organisms such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa resulting in significant morbidity and mortality. According to the 2017 annual surveillance summary, P. aeruginosa accounted for 47.9% of infections in military treatment facilities and none of the strains displayed 100% susceptibility to the antibiotics that were tested.
Additionally, prolonged antimicrobial treatment of infected wounds further contributes to antibiotic resistance, a rapidly growing global problem. Current wound care solutions have minimal efficacy in manipulating the wound environment, do not adequately address key local barriers to wound healing (i.e. bioburden and biofilm), and often have toxicity concerns. Thus, there is a need for technologies that prevent and manage wound infection and promote healing without creating resistance.
AZ Solutions is developing CleanZinc, a low-cost broad-spectrum antimicrobial solution that is rapidly effective against microbial biofilms and has wound healing potential with unprecedented ability to be left in the wound after use without toxicity. We have been performing antimicrobial studies in vitro and in vivo through various efforts and have enlisted some help from various Michigan State University labs to show initial efficacies. In addition, AZ Solutions has engaged with a private lab to perform further in vitro and in vivo studies. Our most recent study has demonstrated a 5.7 log reduction in biofilms of Pseudomonas and Staph aureus (99.9998% kill of bacteria embedded in their protective coatings). CleanZinc has also shown reduction of 99.999% of Pseudomonas and 99.98% of Staph aureus in a pig wound model. Most noteably, the wounds did not demonstrate any statistically significant increase in tissue toxicity compared to untreated controls (examined independently by a blinded veterinary pathologist at Michigan State University).
CleanZinc will revolutionize wound care management by providing a low-cost solution that prevents and manages bioburden and biofilm formation at the site of the wound while simultaneously delivering critical wound-healing cofactors to stimulate healing. Owing to its low toxicity, it will offer the unprecedented ability for the irrigant to be left in the wound, providing prolonged therapeutic activity, which is a major differentiator from products currently on the market.
