Non-toxic underwater adhesive could yield new non-invasive surgical glue
WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana: A non-toxic glue modelled after adhesive proteins produced by mussels and other creatures has been found to out-perform commercially available products, pointing toward potential surgical glues to replace sutures and staples.
More than 230 million major surgeries are performed worldwide each year, and over 12 million traumatic wounds are treated in the United States alone. About 60 percent of these wounds are closed using mechanical methods such as sutures and staples.
“Sutures and staples have several disadvantages relative to adhesives, including patient discomfort, higher risk of infection and the inherent damage to surrounding healthy tissue,” said Julie Liu, an associate professor of chemical engineering and biomedical engineering at Purdue University.
Most adhesives do not work well in moist environments because water interferes with the adhesion process. While developing adhesives that overcome this problem is challenging, glues for medical applications must meet an additional requirement: they must be non-toxic and biocompatible, as well.
“Current biomedical adhesive technologies do not meet these needs,” she said. “We designed a bioinspired protein system that shows promise to achieve biocompatible underwater adhesion coupled with environmentally responsive behaviour that is ‘smart,’ meaning it can be tuned to suit a specific application.”
Current FDA-approved adhesives and seal ants face several challenges: many are toxic; others cause inflammation and irritation.
“More important, however, is that most of these adhesives do not possess sufficient adhesion in an excessively wet environment and are not approved for application in wound closure,” Liu said. “In fact, many of these materials specifically advise to dry the application area as much as possible.”