College of Medicine faculty members contribute to innovative wound healing research that earns Accelerator Award
Interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine is facilitating development of a novel peptide that promotes wound healing. This comes at a time when deeper understanding of wound environments has led to advancements in reshaping clinical practice through research and technology.
Thomas Cherpes, DVM, MD, associate professor, and Rodolfo Vicetti Miguel, MD, assistant professor of research, both in the Ohio State College of Medicine Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, developed the peptide and demonstrated its ability to promote healing of skin wounds in mice.
Follow-up studies in horses were performed at Ohio State’s Galbreath Equine Center in collaboration with Hilary Rice, DVM, MS, and Caitlin Moreno, DVM, MS, both assistant professors in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences within the College of Veterinary Medicine.
An application by Dr. Vicetti Miguel and Dr. Cherpes, titled “Towards commercialization of a novel peptide that accelerates cutaneous wound repair,” was granted an Accelerator Award in August to advance commercialization of their technology for veterinary markets.
This award program supports translation of Ohio State innovations into market-ready technologies from Ohio-based startup companies. Funded by the university’s Ohio Third Frontier Technology Validation and Start-up Fund, the program is administered by the commercialization team at the Enterprise for Research, Innovation, and Knowledge at The Ohio State University.
“We validated the peptide’s effectiveness in horses in a clinically relevant setting,” Dr. Vicetti Miguel said. “The award will fund a comprehensive market assessment and regulatory landscape analysis to support the potential commercialization of this wound-healing technology.”
Dr. Cherpes said proof of concept studies were supported by the College of Veterinary Medicine via the Consortium for Advancement of Neuromusculoskeletal Science (NMS) and Locomotion (CANSL) and intramural equine awards, and that they’re excited to take this next step toward bringing a promising wound healing therapeutic to the clinic.
“Our collaboration with Drs. Rice and Moreno allowed us to bridge the gap between lab discovery and real-world effectiveness,” Dr. Cherpes said. “Many horses are negatively impacted by skin wounds, and we are grateful for this Accelerator Award and the chance to advance our technology into the clinic. Because horses and humans use a similar mechanism for wound repair, our technology may also have applications for humans.”
