One of the biggest things facing battlefield medics today is how do we stop bleeding without the ability to suture in the field? Now I’ve seen plenty of things in movies and Grey’s Anatomy- anywhere from applying pressure to this cool powder stuff that apparently never works. Joe Landolina is a biochemical engineer and inventor, who invented Vetigel, a crazy awesome gel that will stop bleeding within three minutes of application (and by the way he invented this while he was an ungergrad; thanks Joe for making us all feel inadequate). Landolina has been searching for the answer to the question, “how do we actually look at wounds and how do we stop them quickly in a way that can work with the body?”
As we know
very well from class, our skin, well rather the outside of our cells, is made
up of an extracellular matrix, or ECM and we also know that this ECM vastly
differs whether or not we are looking in the skin or in the liver. Landolina
has been using characteristics of the ECM to develop a product that works with
an individual area’s ECM since it is here that wound healing takes place. He
wanted to take advantage of the 3D nature of the ECM in order to rebuild it
after a wound takes place. Landolina’s idea: to take some sort of gel that can
reform the damaged parts of the ECM. The idea of this gel is to apply it
directly to the wound where the gel essentially mimics the area’s ECM
composition. It reassembles into the local tissue immediately and thus stops
the bleeding. Landolina reports that the blood actually starts to produce
fibrin as a response once it recognizes the gel and therefore clotting occurs.
If you click
on the link, you can actually see a demonstration. Landolina uses a piece of
beef and a simulator of real blood with arterial pressure. He slices the meat,
simulating a real arterial bleed with very life-like pressure coming out. He
injects this gel directly into the wound and within one minute (no joke), the
bleeding stops.
Landolina
reports this gel is going to be in use by veterinarians by this January, but is
still in progress for human use. He reports “we're working very diligently to
try to get it into the hands of doctors, hopefully within the next year.” If
this could be put into human use, it could revolutionize the way field medicine
is practiced, not only in the military but also everywhere in the world.
Well thoughts are obviously, what exactly is in this gel that can so readily mimic the specific ECM it encounters, and within seconds! And how is the blood able to identify this gel and immediately start producing clotting factors? AMAZING.
I found this very interesting, the idea of a fool proof wound sealant that could be used by medics or doctors could be game changing and result in many more lives saved. Hopefully this product will pass human trials soon and be available for military personal and first responders. One question I have is how much of this gel is required to be effective, and does it depend on wound size if your going to use this product? Anyways its a fantastic idea, great find!
ReplyDeleteThis stuff is awesome! I have similar questions as Jordan: how large of a wound does this work with? How long does this coagulant gel work at stopping bleeding. This gel is algae based, has there been any reported chances of allergies or reactions to such a gel later in wound healing that affect epithelia regeneration down the road? I'm interested to see where the trials through animals and eventually people lead to understanding its clinical applications.
ReplyDeleteThis reminded me of the dissolvable sutures that came out years ago, while these are still sometimes used today (usually for smaller cuts or for patients who do not want to have sutures removed at a later date, don't care as much about scarring), they were not the end all be all of sutures like maybe once thought. Very interesting new medical technology with promising future relating to trauma and emergency medicine.
The fact that this product is a gel makes it considerably appealing! Being a wilderness and military medicine enthusiast, I admittedly have watched the YouTube videos in which surgeons bisect the femoral artery of a sedated pig and dump a packet of QuikClot or Celox powder into the wound; what coagulated – be it life-saving - mess! Powdered antihemorrhagics are no longer manufactured for that reason (entering vessels and inducing dangerous clots), and their gauze counterparts still require direct pressure unlike this gel. Since this biomaterial seems to incorporate directly into the extra cellular matrix of each tissue and form a hemostatic plug at the wound site, I wonder if similar tissue damage and bleeding is caused if it is removed? Regardless, this technology is fascinating and I love that the polymers in this material are plant derived.
ReplyDeleteI was researching this a bit more and it seems like a pretty cool product. Since it is plant based, the material will be safety reabsorbed by the body as the wound heals (replacing the plant material with human cells). This means that you would never have to worry about taking the gel off of the wound and there wouldn't be any need to worry about re-injuring the area or causing the blood to start flowing again. Supposedly, even for a femoral artery cut you would apply the gel and leave it and both the wound and the artery itself will heal themselves without the intervention of surgery or any other means normally used for fixing tissue.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing is that, Joe, in a video I watched said that he expects to be approved for human use in the next two to three years as it just shipped for animal use this month. The thing I find interesting is that even though they aren't sure if this will even be efficient or safe for human use he is still predicting that this gel will one day also be used to re-synthesis organs for use in humans. He believes that the same chemistry and physiological processes that this gel uses to seal wounds are also able to create new organs in some way that he has not disclosed yet. I am not sure how this will work but it seems like a big leap to me to go from sealing wounds to creating brand new functioning organs. Yes, this might be able to build an organ because of the ECM that it helps to establish but how would this result in the organs ability to actually function properly?