Surgical 'Glue' Sealant for Wounds Tested by Researchers
Surgical medicine has always been looking for an alternative to sutures and staples, and a joint effort from the University of Sydney and the United States may have just come up with one. The MeTro surgical glue could be the solution to finding a quick-acting, flexible and safe sealant that works even for sites that see a lot of movement.
Conventional sutures and staples don't always form a perfect seal and are hard to install in hard-to-reach areas. There's also the problem of closing up wounds in sites that are constantly moving, like the lungs, the heart and arteries.
The high elasticity of MeTro makes it ideal for those applications, as the University of Sydney revealed in their news update. In addition to forming an elastic, flexible seal, the glue also sets in just 60 seconds when exposed to UV light.
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Different formulas also make it possible to make variants that self-degrades anywhere from hours or months. MeTro has been successfully tested in mice and pigs, and it has successfully closed wounds even in problem areas like arteries and lungs.
"A good surgical sealant needs to have a combination of characteristics: it needs to be elastic, adhesive, non-toxic and biocompatible," Nasim Annabi, a researcher at Northeastern University, shared in a press release.
"Most sealants on the market possess one or two of these characteristics, but not all of them. We set out to engineer a material that could have all of these properties," Annabi added, and the team arrived at methacryloyl-substituted tropoelastin, or MeTro for short: a protein that makes up the elastic fibers in human tissue.
The video below shows Professor Tony Weiss at the University of Sydney's Biochemistry department, explaining the breakthrough technology that resulted in MeTro. The surgical glue is about to undergo clinical testing in the near future before it starts commercial production by Elastegen Pty Ltd.
