Medical Hydrogel Relies On Nanotech And A Hint Of Snake Venom

Peptide hydrogels have teamed up with a snake venom toxin to create a material that could help surgeons stem blood loss in the operating room, even if patients are taking blood thinners (ACS Biomater. Sci. Eng. 2015, DOI: 10.1021/acsbiomaterials.5b00356). Researchers have known that the toxin—an enzyme called batroxobin—is a potent blood coagulant. But the enzyme is also highly soluble and quickly diffuses away from the site of an injury or incision, where it would do the most good, says Jeffrey D. Hartgerink of Rice University. So Hartgerink, Vivek A. Kumar, and coworkers brought in hydrogels they had developed previously based on synthetic peptides that self-assemble into nanofibers. The researchers design the amino acid sequence of their peptides to accept active ingredients, such as batroxobin. The batroxobin hydrogels flow when pushed out of a syringe, but they remain in place once the shear stress from their application goes away—a behavior also demonstrated by ketchup, Hartgerink says. By applying the hydrogels to cuts on rat livers, the team showed that the material can stop bleeding within seconds, even when standard commercial medical products fail.