Congratulations to our new Master of Surgery graduate, Nicole Garcia

Dr Nicole Garcia, now a plastic surgery registrar at PeterMac 

Congratulations to Dr Nicole Garcia, who has been awarded a Master of Surgery degree on completion of her thesis, "Graft-host interactions in full-thickness wounds using mouse models". She was supervised by Dr Shiva Akbarzadeh and Dr Cheng Lo in the Department of Surgery.

Little is known about the mechanism by which skin grafting accelerates wound healing. Dr Garcia writes,  "We investigated this using an autologous full-thickness and a synthetic graft in a novel mouse model.

Through PCR and protein analysis, it is postulated that the inflammatory stage of wound healing is modulated via the application of grafts. Furthermore, collagen deposition is significantly different between the two grafts. Several key biomolecules may play a key part in the suppression of inflammation and of the altered collagen remodelling. Identification of these biomolecules and elucidation of how grafts repair wounds is key in the formulation of new skin substitutes." See her thesis online in the Monash library.