Industrial partnership: development of an alginate/extracellular vesicle–based therapy for wound healing in major burn patients

The healing rate and quality of skin-grafted burn wounds is crucial to the survival of severely burned patients. However, the inflammatory condition of the victims limits graft intake and healing. The injection of autologous mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) can improve graft intake and accelerate healing. However, this approach is associated with major logistical and economic constraints, limiting their accessibility in routine clinical practice. As MSCs-derived extracellular vesicles (EV) largely recapitulate the anti-inflammatory and pro-repair effects of MSCs, therapeutic innovation has increasingly focused on the development of acellular EV-based therapies. This raises the question of the optimal mode of administration for such therapies. In the context of burn wounds, the use of a wound-healing matrix as a delivery platform for EVs would be particularly advantageous. The calcium alginate dressing Algostéril® (Laboratoires Brothier) is a hemostatic and healing dressing already in use in burn care units. It has demonstrated excellent cellular tolerance and promotes angiogenesis and wound healing. This calcium alginate has thus emerged as a promising candidate to be evaluated.
The BRAVE project that will be presented develops an innovative therapy for the management of severe burn patients by combining EVs with a calcium alginate dressing, to accelerate the healing of grafted burns. This collaborative research program between INSERM, the French Armed Forces Health Service (SSA) and Brothier aims at providing the preclinical proofs-of-concept of a broadly available EV-enriched dressing that could be a breakthrough in burn and inflammatory wound treatment.