It takes a lot of time for the diabetics to get rid of their chronic wound because the time it takes to heal is significantly longer than that of a non-diabetic person. Although the process behind what the slow-healing mechanism in diabetics is not fully understood, there are a few therapeutic agents that claim to accelerate the healing.

Adding another promising option to fasten the diabetic wound healing, a team of researchers from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, US, claim to have identified a compound that helps accelerate the repair in diabetics.

Previously, the researchers identified two enzymes called matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), also known as MMP-8 and MMP-9. The two enzymes were recovered from a diabetic mice. The researchers associated MMP-8 with accelerated wound healing in diabetic mice and figured out that MMP-9 was responsible for producing harmful effects associated with the condition.

Therefore, the researchers used MMP-9 inhibitor, called ND-322, in diabetic mice to accelerate the wound-healing process. Now, in the latest study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers report of finding a better MMP-9 inhibitor called ND-336.

ND-336 works better than ND-322 in promoting faster healing because the former has better selectivity for inhibition of MMP-9 over MMP-8, reports News Medical.

"ND-336 is a sixfold more potent inhibitor than ND-322 and has 50-fold selectivity towards inhibition of MMP-9 than MMP-8," said lead researcher Mayland Chang, reports The Times of India. "The compound ND-336 has potential as a therapeutic to accelerate or facilitate wound healing in diabetic patients."

In addition, the researchers found that application of selective inhibitor MMP-9 and MMP-8 (enzyme) further enhanced diabetic wound healing. The researchers are currently recruiting diabetics to first analyse the level of MMP-8 and MMP-9 in their wounds and then conduct further research.

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