Grant Achievements
Vancouver, B.C. - July 8th, 2010
Surgery Professor Wins Federal Grant to Reduce Scarring from Burns
The application of nanotechnology to burn treatment was one of four UBC projects to receive funding from a new federal program aimed at encouraging collaboration between reserachers from the health sciences and those from natural sciences or engineering.Announcement of the three-year, $492,336 grant to Dr. Aziz Ghahary, Professor of Surgery and Frank Ko, a materials engineering professor and an expert in biomaterials and nanotechnology, was made July 8th on the UBC Vancouver campus by Gary Goodyear, Minister of State (Science and Technology) and Stockwell Day, President of the Treasury Board and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway. Dr. Ghahary, Director of the BC Professional Fire Fighters' Burn and Wound Healing Lab at Vancouver General Hospital and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, and Dr. Ko believe that a set of proteins is responsible for slowing down or terminating the process of healing burn wounds. The products they plan to assemble - a wound dressing for burn patients, strips for closed wounds and a type of suture - use nanofibres to prevent these proteins from working, and fibrosis from developing.
Dr. Ghahary's and Dr. Ko's research will ultimately "help burn survivors heal, and help reduce the buildup of scar tissue and keloid materials that can in fact negatively impact the performance of the human body," Minister Goodyear said at the announcement, which also included Suzanne Fortier, President of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and UBC President Stephen Toope.
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