Barnacles inspire research to help wounds heal quickly

SCIENTISTS have created a glue that mimics the natural adhesive made by barnacles to help wounds heal quickly.

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hope their new substance will allow surgeons and medics to better prevent blood loss in patients with bleeding organs, and potentially in trauma victims.

Stitches and sutures are effective at stopping bleeding but are rarely possible in a time-sensitive crisis, such as in the aftermath of a car crash. So scientists have been working to find ways to stop blood loss by other means to buy a patient enough time to get to a hospital.

Current methods use man-made materials to increase the rate of clotting to prevent excessive blood loss, which can be fatal in minutes.

In early tests, the barnacle method was far more effective and stopped bleeding in as little as 15 seconds.

Barnacles are the most unassuming of sea creatures, found on the hulls of ships and the skin of whales. The secret to their stickability is a unique two-step process. First, they secrete an oily substance that cleans the surface it is attached to, and dries it out by repelling water. Second, they produce a protein that connects the barnacle to the surface it is on, forming a durable bond.

“This caught our eye,” Hyunwoo Yuk, lead author of the study, told MIT News. “It’s very interesting because to seal bleeding tissues, you have to fight with not only wetness but also the contamination from this outcoming blood. We found that this creature living in a marine environment is doing exactly the same thing that we have to do to deal with complicated bleeding issues.”

The MIT researchers explained they created their own version of the barnacle glue and tested it on injured pig livers. It works in much the same way as the barnacle does, by cleaning the site and then applying a strong glue to repair cuts, but the glue uses adhesive microparticles instead of a protein.