Advancing Adhesives: Mussels Inspire Innovative New Adhesive for Surgery
A new synthetic family of adhesives can serve as bioadhesives.
Mussels can be a delicious meal, but the chemistry that lets mussels stick to underwater surfaces may also provide a highly adhesive wound closure and more effective healing from surgery. In recent decades, bioadhesives, tissue sealants and hemostatic agents became the favored products to control bleeding and promote tissue healing after surgery. However, many of them have side effects or other problems, including an inability to perform well on wet tissue.
“To solve this medical problem, we looked at nature,” said Jian Yang, associate professor of bioengineering at Penn State. “There are sea creatures, like the mussel, that can stick on rocks and on ships in the ocean. They can hold on tightly without getting flushed away by the waves because the mussel can make a very powerful adhesive protein. We looked at the chemical structure of that kind of adhesive protein.”