AMMONS LAB

As of 2013, there were nearly 30 million Americans with diabetes; that's one in ten adults, but by 2050 estimates from the American Diabetes Association indicate that one in three adults ( 350 million Americans) will be diabetic. At current rates of amputation ( 25%), this population will have to absorb the social and economic burden of over 85 million diabetic amputees. While normal wound healing proceeds through a well-described iterative process, in non-healing wounds this stalls at the transition from inflammation to tissue repair. Our hypothesis is that macrophage functional plasticity is key to this transition and directly facilitates shifting the wound environment from pro-inflammatory to anti-inflammatory, proactively antimicrobial to fostering tissue repair. Our understanding of macrophages has altered from being garbage collectors to keystone species in the functional ecology of wound-healing, as well as such diverse fields as embryonic development and oncology. In our lab,..

Primary location: Boise United States