Chief Investigator: Associate Professor Marcus Wagstaff

Funding Amount: $100,000

Recipient: CALHN – Central Adelaide Local Health Network

Overview: Poor burns scars and their associated joint contractures are disabling in children. The Skin Engineering Laboratory of the Burns Service at the Royal Adelaide Hospital has developed a two-stage strategy to treat adult patients with severe full-thickness burns. The next progressive step is to translate this to children. The scaffold strategy forms the basis for reconstruction of extensive burns and other acute and chronic wounds. This would dispense with the existing need for extensive painful and traumatic donor sites from skin graft harvesting, numbers of skin autografting procedures, and long-term disability from scars and contractures (1).