Every year, the healthcare system is burdened by a staggering $250 billion due to wounds that fail to heal properly. This highlights a critical need for innovative solutions and a renewed focus on wound care. Recently, a groundbreaking medical device has been granted approval in Mexico and the UAE, offering new hope for the treatment of chronic wounds. Jasen Petersen, the co-founder and CEO of Ionic Alliance Foundation, Inc. (IAF), believes this approval signifies more than just a novel treatment entering the market.

Known as Ion Biotechnology Aqueous Ligands (IBAL), this therapeutic technology acts as a microimmune restorative. According to Petersen, IBAL functions through a unique physical-chemical mechanism that sets it apart from traditional pharmacologic, metabolic, or immunologic methods. This approach reflects a broader philosophy aimed at democratizing healing by reshaping regulatory frameworks and enhancing accessibility.

Petersen critiques the current state of wound care, suggesting it often relies on methods that might increase costs without genuine benefits. He argues that many interventions contradict the body’s natural healing processes, often leading to more harm than good. For instance, the use of antimicrobials to kill pathogens can inadvertently damage healthy tissues, creating cellular trauma and diminishing tissue quality, which could lead to a cycle of ongoing interventions and impede true biological healing.

Jasen Peterson (provided)

IBAL’s formulation offers a different path, one that aligns more naturally with cellular biology. Petersen emphasizes that this method involves a sequence of supportive actions, beginning with the elimination of pathogens using agents that do not harm the cells themselves. By restoring the microimmune environment and balancing redox states, cells can follow their natural healing trajectory, reducing the need for aggressive interventions. This approach allows for pathogen clearance through a healthier ecosystem rather than forced measures. “Our goal is to introduce an intervention that harmonizes with cellular biology to speed up wound healing, thereby minimizing disruptive interventions,” Petersen explains. Moreover, IAF provides the foundational formula, which other companies can adapt and market under their own brands.

Economically, Petersen sees Mexico’s regulatory approval as a game-changer. He highlights that the device is classified as a medical device rather than a drug, which could result in lower production costs and quicker development timelines.

“A device like this can reach the market within one to three years, with development costs ranging from $250,000 to $5 million, unlike drug development, which is significantly more expensive,” he points out. This classification could enable affordable pricing from the outset, potentially alleviating the financial burdens that have made chronic disease management a major driver of healthcare expenses.

For diabetic foot ulcers alone, the total annual costs range between $9 to $13 billion in the US. “Add psoriasis, eczema, or non-melanoma skin cancer, and the impact could become staggering,” he notes.

IBAL’s formulation encompasses diverse delivery methods, including topical, nebulized, injectable, and even IV infusion, each designed to address dozens of conditions where local ion imbalance and oxidative stress drive dysfunction. Petersen believes the science is consistent, so development costs remain at device-level efficiency. “Each delivery method leverages the same underlying platform, meaning we can treat multiple conditions with minimal incremental cost,” he says.

With the medical device development pathway opened up, Petersen believes the challenge shifts from raising capital to ensuring mission-aligned governance. The expense of conventional development processes requires almost exclusive focus on ROI extraction. “Salutogenic treatments could emerge from these systems, but following the conventional playbook would make them expensive even when they don’t need to be, pricing out the populations who need them most,” Petersen states.

He believes Decentralized Science (DeSci) offers an alternative governance structure. Communities fund milestones directly and participate in governance through tokens that grant decision-making rights. This aligns funder incentives with patient access rather than ROI extraction.

The IAF aims to demonstrate the full DeSci lifecycle, from funding research through achieving regulatory approval to scaling deployment and ensuring affordable patient access. “Many DeSci projects fund hypothesis testing with uncertain outcomes,” Petersen says. He believes IBAL presents a different risk profile: funding deployment of a regulatory-approved platform, with risk isolated primarily to execution. “DeSci creates an alternative,” Petersen notes. “The conventional playbook is no longer the only path forward.”

Ultimately, Petersen argues that the approvals from Mexico and the UAE demonstrate that a salutogenic platform can reach patients through an alternative development path. Regulatory approval, he notes, is no longer a theoretical milestone. It is operational proof that a platform can safely and effectively support cellular healing.

Mexico validated a paradigm, not just a new treatment. The remaining question, in Petersen’s view, isn’t whether salutogenic medicine can work, or whether the platform has broad applicability, or whether device economics enable affordable access. Those questions have been answered. The remaining question: Does an alternative development community emerge, or does IBAL default to conventional pathways?

Petersen believes DeSci can work. Without sufficient community support, IBAL follows the conventional playbook, and the paradigm proof becomes just another blockbuster product. But if IAF demonstrates that DeSci can take a salutogenic platform from approval to deployment, it creates a template. Other healing technologies that don’t fit the conventional playbook would have a path forward. The implications extend beyond IBAL.