Duct tape is jokingly called "the solution to all problems" by workers.
In any scenario where packaging, gluing, sealing is required:
Strong tapes can be perfectly qualified for:
Not enough? Then another slice...
In this industrial and repair scene, strong tape has proved its indispensable position. However, a group of students and professors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have been pondering a question:
Is it possible to invent a powerful tape for medical care?
Someone might say: Can't a Band-Aid do it?
In fact, the Band-Aid is only a small piece of gauze attached to the adhesive plastic, and its hemostasis ability is very limited, but it only forms a certain degree of antibacterial protection for the wound and slightly accelerates the healing of the wound.
The MIT team conceived of a much more powerful formula than a Band-Aid, and it would also be able to replace surgical sutures.
The effect they want to achieve, like the picture below, the tape is directly photographed, it can quickly stop the bleeding and achieve sutures:
"Ultimate Band-Aid", the perfect replacement for stitching
Recently, the journal Science Translational Medicine published a paper from Professor Zhao Xuanhe's team at MIT, "An off-the-shelf bioadhesive patch for sutureless repair of gastrointestinal defects."
The paper describes a new tape-based bio-adhesive material that is more effective in repairing damage to the gastrointestinal tract and other internal organs. The team has tested on live animals such as mice, and the results are very satisfactory and can completely replace the sutures, enabling wireless sutures of the wound.
Moreover, this tape can also be expanded in size for surgical trauma repair in large animals and even human organs.
It really looks like transparent glue:
The tape is divided into two layers: the upper layer is biodegradable hydrophilic polyurethane (PU), which is used to avoid adhesion to surrounding tissues, and the lower layer is a polyacrylic acid (PAA) biological adhesive - PAA material should be familiar to everyone, it used to be used on diapers. Diapers can stick to the baby's fart, but also to ensure "non-wet", because paA is sticky and absorbent...
However, this is really the first time that such materials have been made into the form of adhesive tape for the rapid suture of surgical wounds...
In the past, wound sutures needed to be disinfected and dried, and moisture on the surface of the skin could seriously affect the effectiveness of wound treatment products. Thus, in the past, wet wounds could only be sutured with thread.
However, wired stitching is not perfect: threading needles can cause secondary injuries, and the sutured wounds are not guaranteed to be completely airtight and watertight.
The adhesive film developed by MIT (GI patch in the picture below) is very simple to operate, just like strong tape, it is attached on the line, the elasticity is also very good, during use and after use, it will not cause secondary damage to the wound, and it can also ensure airtightness and watertightness.
Toughness and air tightness comparison of "strong tape" (red) and other commercially available biological tissue adhesives Image source: MIT
What's more, the tape can be used directly on unsused wounds, bonding immediately in seconds, and maintaining adhesion for hours to weeks after the suture operation is complete.
This water resistance is unmatched by most medical adhesives and wound treatment products on the market.
The video below shows this surgically graded powerful tape. The experimenters sprayed a large amount of salt water on and near the wound surface, but did not affect the adhesion and airtightness of the tape. Reminder: The video screen is certainly irritating, please watch with caution.
Hyunwoo Yuk, one of the research team members, said, "We think this surgical tape is a good foundation technology and is expected to be made into a real, buyable product," said Hyunwoo Yuk.
"Surgeons can use it as much as they would in a non-surgical area. It also does not require any preparation or implementation steps to use, as long as it is taken out, opened, and can be used immediately. ”
The Chinese team has been working on biomaterials for many years
There is no doubt that this technology has great humanitarian significance and broad commercial prospects. But it is worth mentioning that behind it is the painstaking efforts of a group of Chinese scientists who have been studying for many years.
The first author of the study was Wu Jingjing, a researcher of Chinese descent. A native of Anqing, Anhui Province, she is a master's and doctoral student at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and has studied under Yang Xiangliang and Professor Wan Ying, two experts in nanotechnology, whose main research direction is the application of temperature-sensitive hydrogels to bone and cartilage defect repair. She published 5 SCI papers during her time at Huake and was co-trained in the Boccaccini Laboratory at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.
Wu Jingjing later joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and is currently a postdoctoral researcher in Zhao Xuanhe's research group, focusing on the application of biological adhesion materials to soft tissue defect repair, and conducting more in-depth research on the application of synthetic materials to surgical damage repair.
Zhao Xuanhe, the head of Wu Jingjing's research group at MIT, is a world-class expert in soft materials.
Zhao Xuanhe graduated from Tianjin University in 2003 and went to North America for further study, completing his master's studies at the University of British Columbia and Harvard University in 2006 and 2008, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard School of Mechanical Engineering in 2009. He later joined MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering as an associate professor in 2014.
At present, Zhao Xuanhe has been promoted to professor and George Hatsopoulos scholar, and has also founded his own research group at MIT, engaged in research on soft materials, especially biological adhesives, simulated skin for robots, etc.
In 2016, Zhao's team published an article in the journal Nature Communications, demonstrating a composite material that can effectively prevent hydrogel dehydration, keeping it moist, flexible and elastic.
This technology belongs to the key underlying innovation in the field of synthetic skin, and is expected to be applied to wearable medical devices such as drug delivery bandages and contact lenses in the short term, which has great significance for robots in the long run, and can develop robot soft skin with biological functions and characteristics.
At the same time, medical care is also an important area that Zhao Xuanhe has always paid attention to.
In fact, the original version of this surgical-grade superglue that we see today was released in October 2019. At that time, Zhao Xuanhe's team made a double-sided adhesive with a shape and size closer to a Band-Aid. In experiments, this double-sided adhesive Band-Aid was able to bond to biological tissue in seconds and could be used for rapid wound sutures.
However, Zhao Xuanhe's team later had a lot of exchanges with surgical clinical experts and got an important feedback: there is no particular need to glue two pieces of soft tissue in the surgical clinical field.
Instead, many doctors and nurses say that for them, the rapid suture repair of internal organ damage has always been a problem. For example, the damage to the stomach and intestines requires sutures to be sutured, which can easily cause infection and scarring afterwards, and may even cause loopholes due to broken threads, causing serious secondary damage.
"Might as well make this technology into a 'Band-Aid' with broken internal organs?" It was suggested.
The team re-engaged in research, adjusting the 2019 version of the double-sided adhesive, replacing the gelatin and chitin in the adhesive formulation with polyvinyl alcohol. The new formulation can ensure that the stability of the adhesive can be maintained for more than a month, and the toughness of the finished tape and other characteristics are as close as possible to the internal organs of the human body itself.
Such "visceral Band-Aids" will not be too soft and easy to break, nor too hard, limiting the activity of internal organs and reducing the repair effect.
In 2020, Zhao Has co-founded a startup with several research group members to continue the advancement of this technology and accelerate the process of commercialization.
The company is called SanaHeal, and its investors include the MIT Deshpande Science and Technology Innovation Center, MIT VMS (Venture Capital Coaching Accelerator), and Asahi Kasei, a well-known Japanese medical device group.
In the future, SanaHeal plans to apply for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to formally put the technology into clinical testing.
Zhao Xuanhe said, "What we are studying is the basic mechanical problem of adhesion in this extremely challenging environment inside the body. Millions of procedures are performed worldwide each year to suture gastrointestinal defects, and suture leak rates are as high as 20% in high-risk patients. Our tapes promise to solve this problem and save thousands of lives. ”
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