U.S. Initiative Creates Wound Healing Centers

THURSDAY, Sept. 14 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. scientists will receive $13 million over the next four years to develop better ways of understanding and speeding wound healing, thanks to a new initiative from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS).

The NIGMS announced last week that the funding will help create four Centers for Innovative Wound Healing Research.

"The new centers create interdisciplinary groups of basic scientists and clinicians to work together on their most innovative ideas," Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, the institute's director, said in a prepared statement.

"Focusing the diverse expertise and approaches of these teams will integrate current knowledge about how wounds heal and generate new strategies to enhance and speed the healing process," Zerhouni said.

The initiative will bring together experts from many fields, including biologists, engineers, geneticists, immunologists and physicians.

The wound healing centers are located at the La Jolla Institute for Molecular Medicine in San Diego; the University of Illinois at Chicago; the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, and Montana State University in Bozeman.

The NIGMS is part of the National Institutes of Health.