How do dermal wounds heal? That is what PhD candidate Daniel Koppenol wants to predict. He developed a model that simulates the healing of wounds.
Sometimes the healing of dermal wounds goes astray and leads to the formation of hypertrophic scar tissue. This is tissue that is firm and thick, can irritate and has a dark red appearance. Most susceptible are people in their twenties and thirties. People with dark skin are also at increased risk.
“At present, it is very difficult to predict the properties of the newly generated tissues that form during the healing of deep dermal wounds,” said Koppenol, who is a mathematician at the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science.
The mathematician wants to construct models with which the properties of newly generated tissues that form during the healing of wounds can be predicted with a high degree of certainty. “Those would most likely improve both the prevention of hypertrophic scar tissue formation and the treatment of wounds,” the Delft researcher said. He recently overcame the first hurdle. He developed a model that simulates scar tissue formation
An article about the model was published on the 26th of May in the journal Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology. Co-authors are Prof. Kees Vuik and Dr. Fred Vermolen of TU Delft and researchers of the department of plastic surgery from VU University Medical Centre and the Burn Centre of the Red Cross Hospital in Beverwijk.
“Biological materials, such as skin tissue, are very complex so developing the model was no easy task”, Koppenol said. “I had to take into account a huge amount of parameters such as the random and non-random movements of cells in the tissue, the speed with which proteins are produced or broken down and the elasticity of the skin, to name just a few.”
Koppenol validated the model by comparing the simulation results with data gathered by a group of Canadian researchers that has been monitoring growth of scar tissue in patients for years. They also measured how the thickness of the tissue evolves over time.
Since the nineteen nineteenths a lot of work has been done on the maths of wound healing. Hopes were that one day mathematicians would unravel the biological mechanism. Koppenol is a bit skeptical about this. “Mathematical models will not allow us to understand the biological principles of wound healing. The biology is much to complicated. I think however that in the future we can predict the outcome of the healing process. It is great that I have been able to use mathematical knowledge to contribute to the further development of modern medicine.”
Daniël Koppenol et al. A mathematical model for the simulation of the formation and the subsequent regression of hypertrophic scar tissue after dermal wounding. Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology, 26th of May 2016
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