The official launch meeting was held on Friday, January 24, 2020
Posted on 24.01.2020
The official launch meeting of the RHU SUccESS (Synergy for a Universal Skin Substitute) project was held at the University Hospital of Nantes, in the presence of the French National Research Agency (ANR) and all 8 partners involved in the project.
These 8 partners are the Nantes University Hospital as project coordinator, two industrial partners (NAOS and Bionuclei), three Inserm units (Institut Cochin-U1016, CRCINA-U1232 and Institut du thorax-U1087), the Protim proteomic platform (University of Rennes I) and the TELAP network (Telemedicine Applied to Wounds).
The kick-off meeting was an opportunity to present the scientific program of the project, as well as the operational, administrative and financial follow-up that will be put in place in order to successfully complete this large-scale project.
The SUccESS project, led by Prof. Brigitte Dréno, has been awarded €6.4 million in funding under the call for University Hospital Research (RHU) wave 4 projects. It will enable the development of an innovative dressing for burns that will promote skin regeneration. In addition, SUccESS aims to improve our knowledge of wound healing by identifying new active molecular effectors and thus new therapeutic approaches.
Burns represent an important health problem requiring the development of specific treatments, due to the complexity of burn healing compared to other skin lesions. Indeed, the goal of burn treatment is to fully restore the skin barrier function as quickly as possible in order to prevent and reduce the major risks of scarring, infection and pain. Currently, no burn treatment is able to respond to these major problems, particularly in the case of intermediate second-degree burns in children which, in 80% of cases, lead to a skin graft.
A collective dynamic has already been launched by the research teams involved at the Nantes University Hospital:
- the Cellular and Gene Therapy Unit (UTCG) for the development of a secretome obtained from fetal skin cells,
- the dermatology department, at the origin of the project,
- the burns department of the CHU of Nantes and the CHU of Nancy for the realization of the two clinical trials,
- the gynecology-obstetrics department for the skin samples,
- the CIC of Biotherapy and all the support structures of the Research and Innovation Department,
- Inserm with 3 laboratories involved (Institut Cochin-U1016, CRCINA-U1232 and Institut du thorax-U1087),
- Protim as well as the industrial partners (NAOS and Bionuclei) are already participating in this collective dynamic, their work having also started.
This first kick-off meeting allowed the participants to appreciate the structuring and innovative character of the project, allowing it to achieve in 5 years a real technological breakthrough in the field of burns.