Promising results for drug to stop scarring
June 2009
A drug designed by a University spin-off company to reduce scarring after surgery or injury has shown promising results in early human trials.
Avotermin (Juvista – Human Recombinant TGFβ3) – developed by Professor Mark Ferguson’s spin-off biotechnology company Renovo – was tested in healthy volunteers with scars monitored over the period of a year.
The scars resulting from wounds injected with the treatment were less red, raised and visible than those treated with a dummy drug (placebo), a paper published in The Lancet medical journal reported.
The Lancet featured the paper in an editorial comment and on its cover with the quote “Avotermin (TGFβ3) is a new class of prophylactic medicine promoting the regeneration of healthy skin and improving scar appearance”. Further trials are now starting across Europe.
Early work on the drug was done at the University’s Faculty of Life Sciences before Renovo was set up to develop it further.
People taking part in three trials had identical 1cm full thickness skin incisions made on both arms and were given an injection of avotermin in one and placebo in the other at the time of surgery and then 24 hours later.
Doctors assessing the subsequent appearance of the scars on a 100-point scale did not know which wound was treated with drug or placebo. The studies, which were done to test safety and find the best dose in more than 200 people, found the scars treated with Avotermin looked more like normal skin than the scars treated with placebo.
It comes after decades of research identifying that the active ingredient in the drug - a signalling protein in the body called TGFβ3 - had anti-scarring properties.
Professor Ferguson said advanced Phase III clinical studies (the “revise” trial) were underway in more than 50 European centres, including Manchester, where the Revise trial’s lead investigator, Gus McGrouther, Professor of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in the School of Translational Medicine is based.
"We're recruiting 350 patients who are undergoing scar revision operations where the original bad scar is cut out and we inject one end of the new wound with Avotermin and one end with placebo,” said Professor Ferguson.
He argued that if proven to be successful, Avotermin treatment could be used in the early management of wounds from surgery and injury.
"What we know from our studies is you have to give the drug when you close up the wound so if someone has had trauma it could be given within the first 48 hours after injury," Professor Ferguson added.