Scientists from Australia and the United States have created a unique biological "super-glue" that can glue the edges of wounds and "stitch" together the softest and most delicate tissues, such as the lungs or arteries, according to an article published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
“The application potential of this glue is enormous, starting with 'sealing' wounds on the battlefield or after various disasters, and ending with various complex surgical operations in clinics. We have shown that our design can work in a wide variety of conditions and can solve problems that cannot be eliminated with other adhesives. We are ready to start human experiments and hope that MeTro will soon start saving lives,”said Anthony Weiss of the University of Sydney, Australia.
One of the major problems for operating theater surgeons and for the military on the battlefield is that all existing methods of stopping bleeding and eliminating wounds have major drawbacks. For example, "stitching" a wound with surgical sutures takes a lot of time, and ordinary super-glue, the most convenient and reliable means for gluing wounds, is a very toxic and fragile substance.
In recent years, scientists have pinned high hopes on synthetic analogs of shell glue, with which they attach to rocks. This substance works well under water, but its strength turned out to be too small in order to stick together torn cartilage, ligaments, muscles and other organs.
On average, “shellfish glue” and other adhesives that are safe for the body hold the glued surfaces about 80-100 times worse than cartilage and ligaments attach to bones. This makes them completely useless for surgery, as they will constantly open or break when healing large wounds.
The secret of creating such a glue, Weiss says, was hidden in the body of the person himself. Our connective tissue consists of elastin protein fibers, a very strong and flexible substance that can stretch several times and at the same time maintain its shape. The properties of elastin, as scientists recently noticed, can vary greatly depending on how its molecules are intertwined.
& quot; Superglue & quot; Australian biologists allows even lungs to be glued / University of Sydney
This is due to the fact that elastin consists of small "building blocks" - relatively short molecules of the protein protoelastin, which are highly soluble in water. By studying their properties, Weiss and his colleagues recently figured out how microbes can be made to produce these molecules in large quantities. This made them wonder if protoelastin could be used to create a "super-glue" that would not be toxic to the body and would not be inferior in strength to the tissues of the human body.
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The problem was that scientists did not know how the protoelastin molecules bind together and form long chains during the synthesis of elastin in connective tissue cells and in human skin. They did not speculate and try to look for the answer in the cells of humans or animals, but invented their own method of polymerizing protoelastin, mixing it with methyl methacrylate, a raw material for the production of organic glass.
This substance, as scientists note, is a thick, colorless liquid if it is stored in a dark room, and when illuminated by an ultraviolet lamp or the sun, it quickly hardens, turning into an elastic and translucent plastic. By adding a small amount of "liquid plexiglass" to protoelastin, the scientists obtained a kind of "super-glue" that is not toxic to the body and at the same time has high flexibility and strength.
“The main advantage of our MeTro glue is that it instantly turns into a gel the moment it touches the surface of the skin, so that it will not 'run away' when treating wounds. Further, its strength can be increased by illuminating the wound with ultraviolet light, thanks to which our glue can very precisely and reliably glue the wounds,”adds Nasim Annabi, a chemist at Northeastern University in Boston, USA.
According to Annabi and Weiss, their team tested this glue in experiments on mice and pigs by gluing damaged arteries and lungs. In both cases, the wound was completely healed before the glue was completely absorbed and all the operated animals survived. Biologists hope that they will soon receive permission to conduct similar experiments on volunteers, which will pave the way for the use of MeTro in clinical practice.