Grants Funded

Abstract
Pilot experiments support the notion that blockade of non muscle myosin II prevents wound contraction and that myosin II is robustly expressed in scar versus normal skin. Unfavorable scarring and fibrosis affects millions of people worldwide. Current treatments are frequently unsuccessful and preventative agents do not exist. Therefore, there is a large unmet need for an effective therapeutic agent to prevent fibrosis. This proposal describes a novel strategy fundamentally different from past efforts. The rationale is to suppress the remodeling phase of repair, targeting the mechanisms fibroblasts and myofibroblasts use to incrementally contract a scar, to prevent fibrocontractile disease progression. The hypothesis is that non muscle myosin II is the motor protein that primarily mediates fibrocontractile disease. The primary objective of this proposal is to validate whether non muscle myosin /I is the motor protein that primarily regulates scar contracture.

Biography
Howard Levinson, MD, FACS is a double board certified General Surgeon and Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon at Duke University Medical Center (DUMC). He is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Surgery and Pathology. Dr Levinson is the Director of Plastic Surgery Research and is the Principal Investigator of the Wound Healing and Fibrosis Laboratory at DUMC. Dr Levinson has an active clinical practice. He cares for patients both at DUMC and the Veterans Administration Hospital in Durham, North Carolina. Dr Levinson performs clinical research and leads a translational research team which is rooted in the basic science laboratory. He holds several translational patents. His team uses contemporary in vitro and in vivo disease models to understand the mechanisms of skin wound healing and scarring in both rodents and swine. His laboratory is funded by intramural as well as extramural grants. His funding portfolio includes past and present grants from industry sponsored research, foundation and society funding, and grants from the National Institutes of Health and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr Levinson is also a national recognized key opinion leader in the field of skin regeneration as is evidenced by his consulting for GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson and Johnson, Heraeus Pharmaceuticals, Exoxemis, Allergan. He serves on the Wound Care Advisory board for Cardinal Health. He had served on multiple study sections for Department of Defense and the Plastic Surgery Foundation and has multiple collaborations with investigators both within and outside of DUMC. He has served as an ad-hoc reviewer for several scientific journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Surgery, The American Journal of Physiology: Cell Physiology, e-PLOS, Journal of Surgical Research, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, and Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry.