Personalized gene compounds to help treat wounds caused by radiation therapy

Sixth-year student Chulpan Kharisova is one of the winners of Umnik 2023, a grant competition held by Russia’s Innovation Support Foundation (FASIE); she is poised to receive 500 thousand rubles.

“During my third year, I started working at a lab headed by Professor Albert Rizvanov where new approaches to cancer therapy and regenerative medicine are studied. That’s how an idea emerged to create a cell therapy compound to treat chronic wounds,” says the interviewee.

A technology should be developed to stimulate physiological regeneration of tissues.

“115 thousand patients were registered as cancer-stricken in the Republic of Tatarstan in 2022. According to the Ministry of Health of Tatarstan, half of them receive radiation therapy. One of the side effects of such treatment are skin lesions,” continues Kharisova.

Such lesions are persisting non-healing open wounds characterized by deep skin damage and resistance to treatment. The duration of regeneration varies and usually takes about a week.

In the case of the new developed technique, the risk of side effects is minimal because a patient’s own cells will be used.

“At this moment, there are no registered cell medications for the therapy of skin lesions on the market, and this new technology can be a promising treatment method because of low immunogenicity due to the use of autologous patient cells and general safety,” concludes the winner.

Among the possible contraindications are diseases of the hematopoietic system, autoimmune ailments, and any inflammation at the site of adipose tissue extraction or the injection site.