Students at IIT Madras have come up with a wound dressing material for patients with diabetes using graphene-based components. In diabetic patients, wounds do not heal like in a healthy individual. This leads to chronic non-healing wounds which can result in serious complications making amputations necessary. Hence, the treatment of these wounds remains a major challenge.
“We wanted to exploit the property of graphene-based materials of improving blood vessel formation at certain concentrations to prepare an inexpensive wound dressing. The psyllium-reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite that we prepared showed exciting results in animal studies,” said Vignesh Muthuvijayan, Assistant Professor, Department of Biotechnology.
Government Aid for Research
Every year more than Rs 12,000 crore central institutes get funding from the government. From this, five older IITs get approximately Rs. 500 crore every year. If the new MoU works well, the funds will lead to more outcomes and action plans, the sources said. A draft MoU was circulated to each IIT and a communication was sent to all IIT directors on 16 January informing them that financial grants-in-aid from 2018-19 will be based on annual plans, proposed by the institutes instead of the block grant mechanism in use.
What does this Agreement Say?
The draft MoU, calls on each IIT to increase student capacity to meet ‘growing industry demand’, provide R&D consultancy to boost indigenous manufacturing and ‘participate in and contribute to nation building through various flagship schemes of the Government of India/State governments requiring technological interventions.’
