This surgical research laboratory takes a multi-disciplinary approach to the problems of wound healing, tissue repair and regeneration. From the molecular and cellular, to the tissue engineering level, projects are aimed to understand and improve fundamental problems in surgical wound failure. Delayed, defective and deficient tissue repair is studied in models of under-healing. Other interests include over-healing as manifested by hypertrophic scarring and stricture formation, for example. Finally, how the biology of tissue repair and homestasis impacts the design of soft-tissue material implants is also studied.

Abdominal wall injury is one current focus of the group. With NIH funding support through an R-01 grant program titled, "Mechanical Wound Failure Induces a Chronic Wound Phenotype" the mechanism of micro- and macro- mechanical load signaling during abdominal wall repair is studied. The abdominal wall is a clinically useful paradigm for studying acute wound failure since surgical and traumatic injury of the abdominal wall is common and complications of abdominal repair are disabling. The hypothesis that load signaling is important for abdominal wall repair challenges the recent surgical dogma that "tension-free" is best. Using in vivo animal wound models and fibroblast cell culture techniques, mechanotransduction repair pathways activated during abdominal wall repair are being defined for the first time. Microarray molecular concepts technology is also being used to define the mechanism of the progression from acute to chronic wound failure. Finally, a clinically relevant model of incisional hernia formation was invented in this lab, is widely cited and has many practical applications from soft-tissue prosthesis design to the biological modification of surgical wound healing.

Cellular and molecular pharmacotherapy of surgical wounds is the focus of the applied technologies effort in this laboratory. The concept of prophylactically stimulating acute laparotomy wound healing with peptide growth factors was first modeled here. Currently, cellular transplant therapy to abdominal wall wounds is being developed through a Department of Defense grant titled, "Rapid Wound Healing Technology Project: The Use of Amnion-Derived Cells and Their Products to Promote Rapid Healing in Acute and Chronic Wounds." Using multi-potent cell sources with immune barriers, it is hoped abdominal wall wound repair can be accelerated and shifted toward a more regenerative phenotype.