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You’d never find a lizard in the Operating Room, but geckos were the inspiration for researchers who created a new bandage to join sutures and staples as a basic OR tool for patching up surgical wounds and internal injuries.
“We were inspired by the gecko to create a patterned interface to enhance the surface area of contact and thus the overall strength of adhesion,” said Jeff Karp, PhD, instructor of Medicine at BWH and Harvard Medical School, who led the team of BWH and MIT researchers with Robert Langer, professor at MIT.
The researchers drew on some of the unique qualities of gecko feet and gave the surface of the bandage the same kind of tiny, nanoscale pillars that allow lizards to cling to walls and ceilings. Layered over this landscape is a thin coating of glue that helps the bandage stick in wet environments near the heart, bladder or lung tissue. Because the bandage is biodegradable, it dissolves over time and does not have to be removed.
“There is a big need for a tape-based medical adhesive, and nothing like what we’ve created exists,” said Karp, who began working with his team on this adhesive in 2005. “For example, a surgical adhesive tape made from this material could wrap around and reseal the intestine after a gastric bypass procedure or after a diseased segment is removed.”
Because the tape can be folded and unfolded, it has the potential application in minimally invasive surgical procedures that are especially difficult to suture because they are performed through a tiny incision.
Gecko-like dry adhesives have been around since about 2001, but there have been challenges in adapting this technology for medical applications.
“For these bandages to be used in the body, they must be able to stick in a wet environment, and the materials must be biocompatible so they don’t cause inflammation, biodegradable so they dissolve over time without producing toxins, and elastic so they conform to and stretch with the body’s tissues,” Karp said.
To meet these requirements, Karp, Langer and others invented a biorubber to build the bandage. Using nanopatterning technology—the same technology used to create computer chips—the researchers shaped the biorubber into different pillars at nanoscale dimensions. They added a very thin layer of sugar-based glue to create a strong bond, even to a wet surface.
“This is an exciting example of how nanostructures can be controlled, and in so doing, used to create a new family of adhesives,” said Langer.
Now, the researchers are examining how to tailor the adhesive for specific applications. “We also can use the adhesive as a drug delivery patch by including the drug in the material of the bandage. As it degrades in the body, it will release the drug,” Karp said.
The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) program of the National Science Foundation, and the MIT-Portugal program.