Bleeding Gone in 15 Seconds: Scientists Invent Barnacles-Inspired Surgical Glue Using Slug Slime

Mayo Clinic and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers recently developed a fast-sealing surgical glue to stop bleeding in just 15 seconds.

As indicated in a Mail Online report, frequently seen clinging to rocks, the bodies of ships, or even whales, barnacles may not appear excessively imaginative at an initial glance.

However, it turns out sticky substance that enables them to attach to nearly anything has inspired scientists to invent a new surgical glue that stops bleeding in an instant.

The hope in this new invention is that it could someday help save the lives of soldiers, stabbing victims and survivors of a car crash, and any other related injury.

Essentially, the glue-like substance is binding together the same way as what the human blood is doing when it's clotting.

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Bleeding Stops in 15 Seconds

Typically, surgeons are using synthetic agents to fast-track coagulation and form a clot to halt the bleeding, although, in the fastest circumstances, it still takes a number of minutes.

In this newly developed surgical glue, during the study's preclinical stage, study authors discovered the paste could stop bleeding in a short time as 15 seconds, even before the start of coagulation.

Once barnacles have concealed the sticky substance, then followed up by a protein that's cross-linking them with the surface's molecules.

As this report specified, the two-step process occurs when the sealing glue is applied to tissues or organs.

A similar Washington News Post said, according to Mayo Clinic cardiac anesthesiologist Christoph Nabzdyk, their data show how the paste attains rapid hemostasis in a clotting-reliant manner. He also said the resulting tissue seal could endure even high arterial pressures.

Nabzdyk, also co-author of the study added, they in the team think the paste may help stop every severe bleeding, which includes internal organs and patients who have clotting ailments or are on blood thinners. The surgical glue might be helpful as well for the care of both military and civilian trauma victims.

The Surgical Glue

The paste has a water-repelling oil matrix, as well as bioadhesive microparticles. The latter-mentioned is the microparticles that connect, and the tissue's surface after the oil has provided a clean site for connection. The biomaterial, on the other hand, is slowly resorbing over several weeks.

Researchers have suggested before that slug slime could produce stronger glue to avoid infection and scarring in surgery.

This particular defensive slime is generated by a common garden slug called Dusky Arion, which was discovered in the United Kingdom to foul the would-be predator's jaws.

A couple of years ago, Rebecca Falconer, an undergraduate researcher at Ithaca College in New York, carried out a pioneering study to find possible slime uses in medicine.

Commenting on this previous research, she said, typical sutures such as staples and stitches frequently result in scarring and the creation of holes in the skin that could increase the probability of infection following surgery.

Understanding how adhesive proteins work in the slug glue would help develop medical adhesives that can move and stretch without compromising their strength and adhesiveness.

This new study, Rapid and coagulation-independent hemostatic sealing by a paste inspired by barnacle glue, is published in the Nature Biomedical Engineering journal.

Slug Slime

Earlier on, in 2019, Mail Online also reported that Christopher Gallego-Lazo, an undergraduate researcher in Professor Dr. Andrew Smith's lab, which investigated the nature of adhesive secretion of various mollusks, discovered that the double network construction that's making the slug slime glue is remarkably strong and it can endure large amounts of force.

Essentially, the glue has a rigid protein network that utilizes sacrificial bonds to absorb energy, not to mention the protection of a tangled and deformable network of carbohydrates.

Specifically, Gallego-Lazo found that the strength of the slime can be adjusted by changing some of the chemical bonds within the network of proteins.

Such bonds can be naturally reformed, allowing the glue to deform while retaining its strength. He explained few studies on biological glues had identified the bonds' exact nature, holding the adhesives together.

A report about this new invention is shown on ABC 6 News - KAAL TV's YouTube video below: