Influencing wound healing with heat shock proteins

Heat shock proteins (HSP) belong to the group of chaperones whose main role is to support correct protein folding in cells. Their number increases when exposed to stress, e.g. through application of heat or due to glucose deprivation. The development of a detection system, the “HSP Test”, means that the existence of different heat shock proteins in wound fluids and sera of patients with different wounds can be detected for the first time ever. The aim of the study is to demonstrate a possible correlation between HSP concentrations in wound fluids or sera and the healing process.

The target group includes, for example, patients with acute injuries (approx. 40,000 each year in Germany) and chronic wounds related to diabetes (approx. 70% of the 4 million diabetics in Germany suffer with what’s known as “diabetic foot” syndrome). And the group also includes the growing number of patients suffering difficult-to-heal bedsores. The “HSP Test” enables the course of treatment to be monitored and a prognosis of the progress towards recovery to be made. Based on this information, wound treatment methods can be effectively improved. The “HSP Test” provides completely new opportunities for treating patients that the traditional tests for identifying inflammatory factors could not.

The test system is to be used in hospital laboratories, diagnostic laboratories and doctor’s surgeries. In particular, the possibility of effectively adapting treatment through the results of the test could lead to significant savings in the costs arising up till now for treating traumatic and chronic wounds. For this reason, good market opportunities are predicted for the product. What’s more, the basic scientific principles studied as part of the project could be transferred to analogue applications in the field of life sciences and their development encouraged by harnessing synergy effects.