On diabetic foot, wound healing, amputation prevention, and the merger of consumer tech with medical devices
An unexpected reunion with Dr. William Tettelbach and a generous welcome from the MLK Community Healthcare team made a September 3 visit to South Los Angeles a powerful reminder of why this work matters.
In a new Nature Materials study, traction-force-activated payloads capture the body's own growth factors and release them when repairing cells pull on the scaffold. The work spans living bone and skin models and ex vivo human skin - a striking preclinical step, not yet a treatment for diabetic foot ulcers.
Every one of us has quoted a healing rate. In clinic, in a grant, in a talk, in a conversation with a patient sitting on the exam table asking the only question that matters: will this close? Most of those quoted numbers came from the control arms of industry trials, which is a bit like... Continue Reading →
A familiar beta-blocker has found an unfamiliar role. Phase 3 data suggest topical esmolol may help diabetic foot ulcers close—and the slowest-healing wounds may be especially interesting.
Three new papers converge on a two-cent idea: the neutrophil percentage-to-albumin ratio (NPAR) measures the balance between inflammatory injury and nutritional reserve — tracking both how bad the diabetic foot is now and how the patient fares over years. Plus a clear-eyed look at why AI-driven precision nutrition isn't here yet, and what it will take.
Two diabetic foot data engines published the same day on two continents. STEADY (US) is a 5,000-patient, AI-enabled real-world registry; DARE-DiaFoot (Italy) is a deep, multi-instrumental phenotyping protocol that quietly studies remission. One is the census, the other the core sample. Together with EURODIALE, the U.S. Wound Registry, and the National Diabetes Foot Care Audit, they sketch a blueprint for finally measuring what we manage.
Amputated tissue from the sea cucumber Psolus fabricii healed its own wounds and kept living in plain, non-sterile seawater for more than three years. Jobson et al. in Science Advances on "natural tissue immortality" — and why a wound-healing surgeon can't look away.
Yu and colleagues from Ken Muneoka's group show that sequential FGF2 then BMP2 treatment flips an adult mouse digit amputation from fibrosis to regeneration — rebuilding the distal phalanx with a growth plate, plus a parallel response that regenerates a synovial joint complex with tendon, ligament, and a sesamoid-like bone. The regeneration-competent cells are already in our wound beds. We just have to learn what to say to them.
Our colleagues at the NIDDK Diabetic Foot Consortium have published the methodologic scaffolding the field has needed: a platform study—master-protocol trial design borrowed from oncology and COVID-19 vaccines—applied for the first time to DFU biomarker validation. Their mantra: No DFU Goes Unstudied.
A new review asks whether we can move from patching to regrowing — and what stands between lab-bench organoids and the clinic.
