Founded in 1999, the Wound Healing Foundation is a public 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to improving wound healing worldwide through funding research, education, and outreach. The Foundation was formed by dedicated professionals committed to wound care and to provide patients, researchers, and health professionals the resources to make significant contributions in the critical and under appreciated area of wound healing.
The Wound Healing Foundation is governed by a dedicated Board of Directors composed of leaders in academia, private practice and industry devoted to wound healing problems and the patients and their caregivers that are affected by them.
The Foundation funded the creation of wound healing guidelines for acute wounds, chronic wounds and prevention of wounds by best practices and evidence. These guidelines are freely available to everyone. The Foundation presents yearly research fellowship awards to outstanding scientists and is positioned to expand its research program through additional small grants and young investigator awards.
WHF Keynote Address – T.K. Hunt Lecture: Harnessing GLP-1, GIP and Glucagon Biology to Improve Health Outcomes
Congratulations to Svetlana Mojsov on receiving the King Faisal Prize! Unfortunately her award ceremony occurs the same week as the Wound Healing Foundation’s TK Hunt Lecture at DLS 2026.
Anish Konkar, PhD has graciously agreed to give this year’s Hunt lecture.
Anish Konkar, PhD
Head of Bioscience, Early Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism
AstraZeneca
Washington, D.C.
Anish Konkar, PhD is currently leading the Early CVRM Bioscience group at AstraZeneca. Anish has gained over 20 years of experience in cardiometabolic diseases drug discovery research. Anish obtained his PhD in pharmacology from the Ohio State University and performed postdoctoral research at Wayne State University and Parke-Davis (now Pfizer) researching beta-adrenergic pharmacology in the context of weight management. Anish then joined the Obesity department at Bayer, where he played a key role in teams advancing novel therapies for the treatment of obesity. Subsequently, he joined the Metabolic Diseases department of Hoffmann-La Roche based in Nutley, NJ and later moved to the Roche site in Basel, Switzerland. During this period, the teams led by Anish succeeded in advancing several projects into the clinic, including first of their kind dual and triple peptidergic agonists of GLP-1, GIP and/or glucagon receptors in partnership with Professor Richard DiMarchi (Indiana University). Anish then moved to AstraZeneca (Maryland), where he led teams that successfully advanced multiple candidate drugs into the clinic, including an oral GLP-1R agonist. Anish then joined the Diabetes Therapeutic Area at Sanofi based in Frankfurt, Germany where he initially led the department of GI Endocrinology and Obesity and later headed the Diabetes TA. Most recently, he led the Cardiometabolic and Renal department in the Diabetes and Complications TA at Eli Lilly (Indiana) before moving back to AstraZeneca.
*This symposium is not eligible for continuing education credit.
H. Paul Ehrlich Rising Star Lecture at DLS 2026
Mateusz S. Wietecha, DMD, PhD
Assistant Professor, Oral Biology College of Dentistry
University of Illinois Chicago
Chicago, IL
Talk: Dysfunctional Immune Cell Interactions Drive Chronic Inflammation in Diabetes-Impaired Wound Healing
Dr. Wietecha completed the DMD/PhD dual-degree program at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) College of Dentistry in 2015, and his doctoral research in the lab of Dr. Luisa DiPietro was funded by the Dental Scientist Fellowship through the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR). From 2015-2022, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher and senior research scientist in the lab of Prof. Dr. Sabine Werner at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zurich), where his research was performed in the context of the SKINTEGRITY.CH [skintegrity.ch] national consortium. The Wietecha Lab was started in 2022 at the UIC College of Dentistry Department of Oral Biology, and since 2024, it has been funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA). Dr. Wietecha received funding from the Wound Healing Society (WHS) Research Grant Award, and he was recently recognized with an Early-Career Faculty Award from the WHS and the H. Paul Ehrlich Rising Star in Wound Healing Research Award from the Wound Healing Foundation. The Wietecha Lab uses emerging multi-omic tools such as single-cell and spatial transcriptomics in conjunction with state-of-the-art systems biology and bioinformatics approaches to investigate the spatio-temporal cellular and molecular dynamics of differential healing outcomes in wounds of skin and oral mucosa in health and disease.
Solventum, formerly 3M Health Care, Fellowship Lecture at DLS 2026
Nashwa Cheema, PhD
Massachusetts General Hospital
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Harvard Medical School
Boston, MD
Talk: Photobiomodulation for Therapeutic Treatment of Post-burn Muscle Wasting in a Mouse Model
Nashwa Cheema, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, in Dr. Rox Anderson’s group at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine. Her research focuses on mitochondrial and muscle biology, broadly interested in aging and disease. She attained her phD from University of Alberta, Canada in Physiology, Cell and Developmental Biology where her thesis was focused on sarcopenia, loss of muscle mass and function with age. Prior to joining HMS/MGH, Nashwa was a postdoc in Dr. David Hood’s laboratory at York University, Canada, a pioneer in the field of exercise physiology. Her project in his lab was focused on treatment strategies for mitochondrial health in isolated fibroblasts from patients with mitochondrial mutations. Her current research is on using near-infrared light (photobiomodulation) therapy to improve muscle function in mice, mitigate injuries from exercise and muscle wasting in a mouse model of large burn injury. She has used both in vitro and in vivo models to understand the biological effects of light. Her work suggests that near-infrared light can activate regenerative genes that protect tissue from cellular stress.
Come join the only collaborative wound meeting organized by two non-profit organizations!