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Protease Resistant Growth Factor Formulations For The Healing Of Chronic Wounds, Tabitha Boeringer
Protease Resistant Growth Factor Formulations For The Healing Of Chronic Wounds, Tabitha Boeringer
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Chronic wounds are those wounds which are refractory to treatment, often taking years to heal. These wounds are complex and may present with elevated protease levels, resulting in rapid degradation of growth factors, both native and augmented via treatment. This study’s focus was the development of a system to protect growth factors from protease mediated degradation.
The protective system consisted of chimeric fusion proteins developed to contain both a growth factor or known protease inhibitory peptide and an Elastin-Like-Peptide (ELP)component. The unique phase transitioning abilities of the ELP component allowed for the self-assembly of these chimeric fusion proteins into a …