美国国家公共电台 NPR Failure To Save A Child In Wartime Inspires Wound-Healing Tech

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And experience in a country with enormous numbers of war wounds has led to techniques that heal them more quickly. A Harvard team developed the new technologies. NPR's Jon Hamilton reports the work was inspired by one scientist's encounter with a wounded child in Afghanistan.

JON HAMILTON, BYLINE¹: The scientist's name is Kit² Parker. Back in 2003, he was an Army officer. The child was a patient at a military hospital in Kandahar. Aaron Chapman was a member of Parker's unit.

AARON CHAPMAN: A child had been brought to the front gate who had been severely³ burned.

HAMILTON: Doctors called in Chapman and Parker because they'd been acting⁴ as liaisons⁵ with the local villagers. That evening, they went to the base hospital to see the child. He was about 5, and Chapman says they realized right away that his burns were really bad.

CHAPMAN: There's no greater sense of helplessness than to stare into this child's eyes knowing that you can't save them, you can't help them.

HAMILTON: The boy died, and Kit Parker says the death had a powerful effect on him.

KIT PARKER: Horror. Despair. Rage.

HAMILTON: Parker says those emotions continued to haunt him after he returned to his civilian⁶ job as a biophysicist.

PARKER: I couldn't save that kid. There was nothing I could do. But that doesn't mean there's not something I can do. I'm a father, I'm a soldier and I'm a professor at Harvard.

HAMILTON: So Parker assembled a team of young scientists. Their job, find a better way to heal burns and other wounds. Christophe Chantre is one of those young scientists. He says the team focused on a discovery made decades earlier. In the 1970s, surgeons began correcting birth defects in babies who were still in the womb. And Chantre says after these babies were born, doctors took a close look at the sites where incisions⁷ had been made.

CHRISTOPHE CHANTRE: And they realized that they typically healed with a lot less scars, or, in some case, without any scars at all.

HAMILTON: One reason is that fetal skin, unlike adult skin, contains large amounts of a substance called fibronectin. So Chantre says the team set out to create a bandage made of the stuff.

CHANTRE: Our idea was to actually try to replicate⁸ this fibronectin-rich environment to get a better healing process.

HAMILTON: To do that, they needed to spin fibronectin into incredibly thin strands⁹ known as nanofibers. Eventually they were able to do this using a kind of souped-up cotton candy machine. Then the team applied¹⁰ these nanofibers to wounds in mice. Sure enough, the wounds healed with very little scarring. And, Chantre says, they also healed faster.

CHANTRE: The wounds treated with the fibronectin treatments closed at around Day 11, and the control was several days later, on average, at Day 14.

HAMILTON: Perhaps most impressive, the new skin contained hair follicles, which are not found in scar tissue. And in a second study, the team showed that another sort of nanofiber could also help wounds heal faster.

SEUNGKUK AHN: This nanofiber is made up of cellulose and soy protein.

HAMILTON: Seungkuk Ahn says the soy protein releases a form of estrogen, which promotes skin regeneration. Parker says these discoveries bring him a bit closer to his goal of healing patients like the child he saw in Afghanistan.

PARKER: I don't know if my technology would have helped that night. I doubt it.

HAMILTON: Because the child's burns were just too extensive. But Parker hopes the dressings¹¹ will someday help another injured child.

PARKER: Once we've saved a kid then we're evening the score a little bit.

HAMILTON: Jon Hamilton, NPR News.