A team of UF professors and alumni, sponsored by Quick-Med Technologies Inc., has created a new adhesive bandage that repels bacteria and promotes faster healing.
The product, which received FDA approval last week, will be sold in stores come July and will aid in the creation of anti-bacterial military clothing and more effective hand gels.
Known as the NIMBUS, the bandage is the first and only non-leeching, microbicidal barrier dressing.
"We were trying to make a better wound-healing bandage that would absorb wound fluids and kill bacteria," said Chris Batich, professor of materials science engineering and associate director of UF's clinical and translational science institute.
"Bacteria can't grow in it, and nothing comes out of the Band-Aid and into the wound," said Batich, who invented the bandage with fellow UF professor Gregg Schultz and UF graduate William Toreki.
"Potentially, you can leave it on longer, and it should promote healing faster."
Most bandages absorb wound fluids into the bandage material, creating an area in which bacteria can easily grow.
Because white blood cells are unable to fight these new bacteria, the wound may become re-infected, and the bandage will start to smell.
The NIMBUS technology binds a large polymer to the surface of the gauze fibers said Gregg Schultz, professor of obstetrics and gynecology in UF's institute for wound research.
Other dressings contain microbes such as silver, which may slow the healing process.
NIMBUS also gives the bandage fibers the ability to kill bacteria from the wound and bacteria that are resistant to other antibiotics, such as MRSA, a staph infection that cannot be cured by many common antibiotics, Schultz said.
"This stuff kills those bacteria, the staph bacteria, very effectively," Batich said, referring to the bandage's make-up. "99.999 percent of the bacteria that touch it get killed."
According to Schultz, studies show the NIMBUS bandage could be worn for seven days without having to be changed, versus other dressings that contain large quantities of bacteria after 24 hours.
Ultimately, Schultz said the FDA decided to classify the bandage as a new medical device.
"This took three years to get approval. There was a lot of back and forth talking to the FDA," he said. "Because it has FDA approval, companies have decided to license it. They start selling it around June this year."
According to Batich and Schultz, the whole process took about nine years.
"When we first started out, it was sort of Batich, Toreki and me," Schultz said. "As we became more successful in understanding how to do this and how to make it more effective, Quick-Med kept enlarging the lab, and now there are 7 full-time employees in Gainesville - they're all UF graduates."
Schultz said the major breakthrough occurred because of UF graduate Toreki.
"What we developed the first time worked great in the lab, but it didn't work well and scale up to industrial levels," Schultz said, adding that Toreki made the manufacturing process fit for a broader scale and less costly.
Due to the bandage's usefulness and relatively low cost, Batich and Schultz explained it can be put toward other uses.
Another technology that Quick-Med and UF are working on revolves around a longer-lasting hand disinfectant. It would bond the NIMBUS onto the surface layer of skin, which would be disinfected for about six hours.
