Mussels inspire adhesive that enhances wound closure

Bioadhesives, tissue sealants and haemostatic agents have become the favoured products to control bleeding and promote tissue healing after surgery but 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, such as 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.’

Yang, along with University of Texas-Arlington researchers Mohammadreza Mehdizadeh, Hong Weng, Dipendra Gyawali and Liping Tang, took the biological information and developed a wholly synthetic family of adhesives.

They are said to have incorporated the chemical structure from the mussel’s adhesive protein into the design of an injectable synthetic polymer.