Concerns Raised About Synthetic Glue for Hernia Repair

Boston—A study showing adverse effects from a synthetic cyanoacrylate tissue sealant used in an animal hernia model won the award for best paper in general surgery at the 2006 annual meeting of the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons. Although the brand of synthetic surgical glue tested in the study is approved for use only in Europe, at least one other manufacturer of cyanoacrylate sealant is seeking approval from the FDA for its use in vascular surgery.
The study, in 16 rats, found that in all cases, the glue prevented tissue from adhering to or integrating with the mesh, impaired tissue flexibility and resulted in a severe inflammatory response marked by large seroma formations.
The cyanoacrylate examined in the study was Glubran 2, made by the Italian firm GEM S.r.l. (Viareggio, Italy) and approved for use in Europe in both traditional and laparoscopic surgery.
“It seems not very appropriate for hernia repair in an experimental model, to say the least,” said the lead author of the study, Alexander H. Petter-Puchner, MD, a surgical resident at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Experimental and Clinical Traumatology in Vienna, Austria.
Surgeons who heard the report said it comes amid a welcomed stream of studies into novel means for fixing mesh during hernia repair.
“There are a bunch of these cyanoacrylates that have been used clinically or investigationally as tissue adhesives,” said Raymond J. Lanzafame, MD, the immediate past president of the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons. “The good news is that some of the the cyanoacrylate compounds are hydrophilic. But they, like the currently available cyanoacrylates, do generate a pretty intense inflammatory response. If it’s a version that isn’t broken down by the body in some way, it can turn out as bad as, if not worse than, a suture granuloma in terms of producing pain and irritation.”
Phillip Shadduck, MD, of Regional Surgical Associates in Durham, N.C., said in an interview after Dr. Petter-Puchner’s presentation that while a strong inflammatory response was seen in the study, newer cyanoacrylates might not evoke the same reaction. “We’ve learned in the abdomen, and now in the abdominal wall, that the chemistry of the cyanoacrylates makes a big difference in the inflammatory response it activates,” he said. “There are newer cyanoacrylates coming out in an effort to elicit less of an inflammatory response.”
One such cyanoacrylate, designed to be biodegradable, was approved for use in Europe in February 2005 as an adjunct to sutures during peripheral vascular reconstructions. The product, Omnex, is made by Closure Medical Corporation in Raleigh, N.C., which was recently acquired by Johnson & Johnson. (Dr. Shadduck reported that he has done consulting on the Omnex product.)
In March at the annual meeting of the Society for Clinical Vascular Surgery, results from a trial of 150 patients at 15 centers in the United States and Europe showed significant benefits for Omnex as an adjunctive sealant for vascular anastomoses compared with Surgicel Nu-Knit Absorbable Hemostat (Johnson & Johnson). The study found a statistically significant difference in time to hemostasis between the sealant, with a mean of 119.3 seconds, compared with Surgicel, with a mean of 403.8 seconds (P<0.001). Among patients in the Omnex group, 54.5% had immediate hemostasis, compared with only 10% in the Surgicel group (P<0.001). No significant difference in incidence of adverse events occurred between the two groups (P=0.60).
Using a compound similar to the one approved for external use in the United States under the trade name Dermabond, Omnex is under consideration by the FDA for internal use during vascular surgery.
Whether Omnex would have the kind of detrimental effects in hernia repair that were seen in Dr. Petter-Puchner’s study of Glubran 2 is unclear, but the chief of minimally invasive surgery at the department of surgery, Keck School of Medicine of USC, Los Angeles, said he would be “wary” of such a use.
“The artificial glues, or glues that have any artificial nature, stay around in the body and create a foreign body reaction,” said Namir Katkhouda, MD, who published the first study using a fibrin sealant, Tisseel, for mesh fixation in hernia repair (Ann Surg2001;233:18-25). “Some people have spun around the concept of using sealants in mesh fixation to these other adhesives [with artificial components]. I am absolutely wary of them. The important difference between the fibrin sealants and any artificial sealant is that the fibrin is naturally removed by the body at 10 days. That’s what you want.”
Tisseel, made by Baxter (Irvine, Calif.), is widely used in Europe for mesh fixation, but is currently approved in the United States only for cardiopulmonary bypass surgery, splenic repair and colostomy closure. A spokesman for Baxter said the company has a “strong desire” to broaden the indications for Tisseel in the United States.
In his award-winning paper, Dr. Petter-Puchner presented data on 20 Sprague Dawley rats, in which two defects per animal were created in the abdominal wall left and right of the linea alba (1.5 cm in diameter), with the peritoneum was spared. The lesions were left untreated for 10 days to achieve a chronic condition and then were covered with 2 cm×2 cm of mesh sealed with Glubran 2. Four of the animals were sacrificed after 17 days, eight after four weeks and another eight after 12 weeks. The meshes were then biomechanically tested and histology was performed.
At the 12-week mark, the hook-pull test revealed a loss of mesh adhesion wherever the sealant had been used. “There was no tissue integration through the mesh and histology revealed strong inflammation,” Dr. Petter-Puchner said during his presentation. “We also saw a huge seroma formation.”
Using a suction cone to test the elasticity of the tissue, his group found 4.2 mm of deformation in untreated areas, but just one-tenth that much in areas where Glubran had been applied, demonstrating a loss of flexibility.

Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease House of Commons debates, 18 March 2010, 5:27 pm

New Published Study Finds the Cost of Blood Transfusions is Significantly Under-Estimated, Establishes True Cost at $522 to $1,183 Per Unit

IRVINE, Calif., April 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- A new blood transfusion cost analysis study published in the April 2010issue of Transfusion, a peer-reviewed academic journal, shows that when all of the complex cost factors leading up to and after a red blood cell (RBC) transfusion are considered, the actual cost of blood is substantially higher than previously estimated. With actual blood transfusion costs ranging between $522 and $1,183 per-unit—37% higher than estimated by prior studies, which did not include all associated costs—the new study calculates that the true cost of blood is 3.2 to 4.8-fold higher than reported blood product acquisition costs.(1)

"Representing the most detailed and rigorous method utilized to date to account for the cost of blood transfusions," studyfindings confirm that annual expenditures on blood and transfusion-related activities for surgical patients are significant resource drains—costing between $1.6 to $6.0 million per hospital surveyed.

In the study, researchers from the Society for the Advancement of Blood Management (SABM) and the Medical Society for Blood Management (MSBM) prospectively analyzed 20,104 surgical patients who had their blood typed and screened in preparation for a blood transfusion at two U.S. and two European hospitals. After precisely mapping all diagnostic, therapeutic, technical, laboratory, logistic, administrative, informational, educational, and quality activities involved in the transfusion of blood in real-world surgical settings, researchers constructed an activity-based cost model capturing all the actual direct and indirect costs of acquiring, delivering, administering, and monitoring RBC transfusions from the hospital perspective—yielding "for the first time a dollar amount for the cost per unit of blood that reflects the complexities of real-world blood utilization."

Study findings also showed that "total annual blood costs are largely driven by transfusion rate," which includes factors such as the proportion of surgical patients transfused and the number of RBC units per patient transfused, and provide a unique understanding of both cost drivers and the opportunities for cost containment. According to researchers, "reducing either or both factors has the potential to reduce costs dramatically."

Most importantly, the study's activity-based cost model provides a "roadmap for institutional administrators worldwide to evaluate hospital processes and the impetus to initiate programs to reduce and optimize blood usage," says lead researcher and the President-elect of SABM, Aryeh Shander, M.D., who is also the Executive Medical Director for The Institute for Patient Blood Management & Bloodless Medicine and Surgery at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center inEnglewood, New Jersey. Dr. Shander believes that this study spotlights the incredibly complex resource and cost drains associated with real-world blood transfusions, offering hospitals and healthcare providers an important cost saving insight that "improved blood testing techniques and blood conservation strategies provide unique opportunities to significantly reduce the number of unnecessary blood transfusions and the quantity of units administered—delivering better cost containment and patient benefits."

While multiple studies have shown that blood transfusions increase morbidity and mortality, the present study did not attempt to evaluate the morbidity-associated costs of blood transfusions. Thus, the cost estimate presented in this study may still underestimate the cost of giving blood transfusions.

Masimo Rainbow SET Pulse CO-Oximetry—a breakthrough noninvasive blood constituent monitoring platform measuring multiple blood constituents that previously required invasive procedures, including: total hemoglobin (SpHb®), oxygen content (SpOC™), carboxyhemoglobin (SpCO®), methemoglobin (SpMet®), PVI®, acoustic respiration rate (RRa™), oxyhemoglobin (SpO2), pulse rate (PR), and perfusion index (PI). Masimo SpHb, PVI, and SpO2 have been shown in multiple clinical studies to provide accurate, reliable, real-time measurements that help clinicians to proactively monitor and manage hemoglobin, fluid, and oxygen saturation levels more appropriately and conservatively.

Insurance Company offers screened blood

ALC Health has signed an agreement with the Blood Care Foundation (BCF) to provide clients with screened blood, in the event of a medical emergency, from a network of blood banks around the world.
The service will be added as a new free benefit to all of the company's policies, including travel insurance, from 1 June 2010. ALC Health will be the only international medical provider offering the service across all of its policy products.
Andrew Apps, director at ALC Health commented:"The increase in incidences of people being given infected blood meant that many of our members were requesting a service of this type. We are delighted to be working with the BCF and now, at no extra cost to our customers, they can be assured that in the event of requiring a blood transfusion the blood will be available within a short space of time and will have been fully screened."
The BCF is a Sussex based charity that has been established since 1991 to provide a solution to the problems of sourcing and supplying screened blood in the case of emergencies. The BCF has built up a network of blood banks to overcome the demand where blood is in short supply, or the local blood does not meet US, UK and EU standards. All blood supplied by BCF is drawn from internationally recognised blood centres, which meet the highest international standard. BCF also supplies immunoglobulin and vaccine for the treatment of rabies.

Potential Risk to Blood Supply Probed

An infectious virus linked to two diseases is drawing the attention of public-health officials, who are investigating the potential threat to the nation's blood supply.
It isn't clear if the virus, known as XMRV, poses a danger, and public-health officials say there isn't evidence of spreading infection. But because of concern over the potential for widespread infection and preliminary evidence that XMRV is transmitted similarly to HIV, officials are quickly trying to determine if action is needed to protect the blood supply.
XMRV was discovered in 2006 when it was found in tumor samples from men with a rare form of familial prostate cancer. Research has also linked the virus to chronic fatigue syndrome and found it in measurable levels in the blood of healthy people. But the evidence isn't conclusive, as several other studies failed to find XMRV in the blood of people with chronic fatigue syndrome, and it isn't known how prevalent the virus is or whether it causes disease.
"These are early days trying to understand the public health significance of XMRV," said Jay Epstein, director of the Office of Blood Research and Review at the Food and Drug Administration.
Efforts are under way to find effective tests for the virus and determine its prevalence, led by a working group funded by the National Institutes of Health and including federal agencies such as the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Blood banks, academic institutions and at least one advocacy group are also involved.
The focus on XMRV is part of a growing effort to better monitor emerging infections—disorders that have either increased in humans in recent decades or are deemed a potential threat. Currently there are 12 tests used to block infectious agents from entering the blood supply, such as HIV or hepatitis C, and more screens are under study, including those for dengue, human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and agents that cause malaria. There is no FDA-licensed lab test for XMRV, and officials say they are still setting standards for diagnosing it.
Public-health officials increasingly recognize that even infections not typically found in the U.S. can quickly come here because of global travel. Many viruses also have long incubation periods, making it harder to recognize that the virus was transmitted by a blood transfusion. In an October 2009 report, a federal advisory committee on blood safety and availability concluded that biovigilance in the U.S. is a "patchwork of activities, not a cohesive national program."
The incidence of infectious diseases being transmitted through transfusions is small, typically only a handful each year, according to the American Red Cross and data reported to the FDA. About 16 million units of whole blood and red blood cells were donated in the U.S. in 2006, the latest data available, according to the 2007 National Blood Collection and Utilization Report. The American Red Cross, which collects almost half of blood donations in the U.S., estimated that about 10,000 donors a year turn out to be infected with pathogens that officials screen for. Nearly half are hepatitis C virus.
Michael P. Busch, who runs the Blood Systems Research Institute in San Francisco and is a member of the XMRV working group, notes that everyone harbors benign viral infections. These viruses are transmitted in every blood transfusion, but aren't known to cause diseases in recipients, says Dr. Busch. Even if XMRV is found to be present in large numbers of blood donors, Dr. Busch notes, it is still necessary to determine if XMRV causes diseases.
The working group was established after a paper was published in October in the journal Science, where researchers reported finding the virus in a majority of 101 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. The study's co-authors at the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease, the National Cancer Institute and the Cleveland Clinic,also found the virus in nearly 4% of 218 healthy people used as controls in the study.
Extrapolating from those numbers, public-health officials estimated that up to 10 million people in the U.S. and hundreds of millions of people globally could be infected with XMRV, or xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus.
The apparent link to CFS, which affects an estimated 17 million people world-wide, and has no specific treatments, has been closely followed by the patient advocacy community. The Whittemore Peterson institute, established by the family of a chronic fatigue patient, has started collecting blood from CFS patients who got their diagnosis following a blood transfusion and plan to launch their own study of the issue, says Annette Whittemore, founder and president of the institute.
The CFIDS Association of America, an advocacy group for chronic fatigue syndrome, set up a bank to collect biospecimens to be used in potential studies about CFS, including XMRV-related ones. Researchers at Emory University and the University of Utah published a study last week showing that XMRV may be treatable with drugs that treat HIV.
The AABB, an association of facilities that collect virtually all of the U.S. blood supply, has also set up an XMRV task force, although the virus doesn't appear on a list of infectious agents evaluated by a special AABB transfusion-risk committee, as concerns came out after the latest list was put together.
Labs in Europe reported earlier this year that they haven't been able to replicate the XMRV findings in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome or prostate cancer. And public-health experts say a key issue in sorting out the disparate findings is to reach agreement on tests that are sensitive and reliable in identifying XMRV in the blood.
The federal working group's project has three phases. First, labs at six participants—including the FDA, the National Cancer Institute, the CDC, and the Whittemore Peterson lab—are using a panel of blood samples to try to establish which of the labs' tests are sensitive and reliable enough to find XMRV in the blood. Results are expected in a few weeks.
In the second phase, also launched, a panel of around 350 different blood samples developed by Dr. Busch's team will be sent to four different labs. Some of the samples are from chronic fatigue patients known to have XMRV. Others from healthy donors have been spiked with the virus or have tested negative. All the samples are blinded, and the study will see whether the different labs can agree on XMRV positive status for chronic fatigue patients.
A third phase may be launched later, using frozen specimens in federal repositories dating to the 1970s. These repositories link donors to recipients and will allow researchers to see if XMRV was transferred in transfusions and help determine prevalence in the past as well as today, as well as geographical clusters or associations with age and gender.
"There is a balance to what we are doing," says Simone A. Glynn, branch chief of transfusion medicine and cellular therapies at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and chairperson of the XMRV working group. "You do not want to transfuse an infectious agent that causes problems. But you do not want to take blood out of the system that is not causing any problems."

Biotechnology a boon to Textile Industry

The biotechnology has prefabricated rapid developments in genetic engineering with a possibility of ‘tailoring’ organisms in order to optimize production of established or novel metabolites of commercial importance and of transferring genetic material (genes) from one organism to another. It has economized developing industrial processes with less energy and renewable raw materials thus it is an effective interdisciplinary and integrate natural and engineering sciences. Few textile industrial uses are focused here.

Fibers and Biopolymers: Cotton, wool and silk natural textile fibers are an calibre but biotechnology producing one-of-a-kind fibers and improve yields of existing fibers. Cotton is leading worldwide textile fiber with ca 20 million tons grown/year by about 85 countries but it is vulnerable to many insects, and to maintain yields, massive amounts of pesticides are in use. Cotton is prone to infestation by weeds under intense irrigation conditions and needs throughout its growth cycle, and has poor tolerance to any of the herbicides. Hence biotechnologists have place forward short-term objectives on genetically engineering insect, disease and herbicide resistance into cotton plant along with modification of fiber calibre and properties to have high performance cottons. Naturally colored cottons are attracting the world market hence transgenic intensely colored cottons (blues and vivid reds) is dream of the day that can replace bleaching and dyeing.

Biotechnology has largely influenced animal fiber production, in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer, diagnostics, genetically engineered vaccines and therapeutic drugs are other catchments of it. CSIRO, Australia’s national research organization is place up efforts for genetic modification of sheep to resist attack from blowfly larvae by engineering a sheep that secretes an insect repellent from its hair follicles and ‘biological wool shearing’’. And is expected to artificial epidermal growth bourgeois which on injection into sheep disturbs hair growth, within a month, it breaks up in wool fiber and fleece can be pulled off whole in half the time it takes to shear a sheep.

Fermentation is developing biopolymers at large-scale i.e. bacterial storage compound polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) is developed by Zeneca Bioproducts and is as produced ‘Biopol’. It high molecular weight linear polyester and thermoplastic (melts at 180°C) and can be melt spun into biocompatible and biodegradable fibers suitable for surgical use where human body enzymes slowly degrade sutures. Biopol is being used as conventional plastics for shampoo bottles but it is not economic, research is on to produce Biopol from plants, probably from genetically engineered variety of rape. Polysaccharides chitin, alginate, dextran and hyaluronic acid biopolymers are of interest in wound healing as chitin and its derivative chitosan are important components of fungal cell walls, at present manufactured from sea food (shellfish) wastes. Patents taken out by Asian Unitika cite a use of fibers prefabricated out of chitin in wound dressings. At BTTG, research has been directed for use of intact fungal filaments as a direct source of chitin or chitosan fiber to produce affordable wound dressings and other novel materials. Tests are carried out at Welsh School of Pharmacy indicate that these products have wound healing acceleration properties. Wound dressings based on calcium alginate fibers have already been developed by Courtaulds and are marketed as ‘Sorbsan’. Present supplies of this polysaccharide rely on its extraction from brown seaweed’s. However, a polymer of similar structure can also be produced by fermentation from certain species of bacteria. Dextran, which is manufactured by fermentation of sucrose by Leuconostoc mesenteroides or related species of bacteria, is also being developed as a fibrous non-woven for specialty end-uses such as wound dressings. Additional one-of-a-kind biopolymers are now coming onto market thanks to biotechnology e.g. hyaluronic acid a polydisaccharide of D-glucuronic acid and N-acetyl glucosamine found in connective tissue matrices of vertebrates and is also present in capsules of some bacteria. The original method of production by extraction from rooster combs was very inefficient requiring 5 kg of rooster combs to wage 4 g of hyaluronic acid. Fermentech, a British biotechnology company, is now producing hyaluronic acid by fermentation. The same amount of high calibre purified hyaluronic acid can be obtained from 4 liters of fermentation broth as opposed to 5 kg of rooster combs.

Different biotechnological routes for cellulose production are being worked out globally, cellulose is produced as an extra cellular polysaccharide by several bacteria in form of ribbon-like micro fibrils, and can be used to produce moulded materials of relatively high strength. Sony, a Asian electronics company has patented a way of making hi-fi loudspeaker cones and diaphragms from bacterial cellulose. An substitute route to cellulose, still at a very primeval stage of development, concerns in vitro cultivation of plant cells. Culturing cells of various strains of Gossypium can produce cotton fibers in vitro include a more uniform product displaying particularly desirable properties. Plant tissue culture can wage a steady, all year supply of products without climatic or geographic limitations free of contamination from pests. Proteins are interesting biopolymers for utilizing new genetic manipulation techniques where animal and plant proteins genes (e.g. collagen, various silks) can now be transferred into suitable microbial hosts and proteins produced by fermentation. US army is taking up spider silk as a high performance fiber for bulletproof vests.

Enzymes

Chemical reactions by catalytic proteins (enzymes) are a central feature of living systems, living cells makes enzymes even though the enzymes themselves are not alive and we can encourage living cells to make more enzymes than they would normally make. Or to make a slightly different enzyme (protein engineering) with improved characteristics of specificity, stability and performance in industrial processes and operate under mild conditions of pH and temperature. Many enzymes exhibit great specificity and stereo selectivity. With a notable exception of starch-size removal by amylases, however, scant attention is given to application of enzymes in textile processing for preparation textile fibers e.g. flax and hemp by dew retting involves action of pectolytic enzymes from various microorganisms, which degrade pectin in middle lamella of these plant fibers. Yet no attempts appear to be taken to use isolated enzyme preparations for desired effects even though their effectiveness has been demonstrated in the laboratory.

Use of isolated enzymes to remove fats and waxes, pectin’s, seed-coat material and colored impurities from loom say cotton and cotton/polyester fabrics, leading to a novel, low-energy fabric-preparation process, (replace scouring and bleaching) is investigated at BTTG. Only partial success is prefabricated using existing commercial enzyme preparations due to the recalcitrant nature of some of components and process was found to be too slow and therefore uneconomic for current applications. Enzyme that is being applied in textile processing for removal of hydrogen peroxide prior to dyeing is catalase. Undoubtedly, use of microbial enzymes can be expected to expand into many other areas of textile industry replacing existing chemical or mechanical processes in not too distant future.

Contrary to textile processing enzymes are used in detergents since their inception in 1960’s, and washing powders are referred to as ‘biological’, and degrade stains with milder washing conditions at lower temperatures saving energy and protects fabric. Cellulose enzymes could replace pumice stones used to produce ’stone-washed’ denim garments, stones can alteration clothes, particularly the hems and waistbands, and most manufacturers are now using enzyme treatment. Cellulose enzymes are in biopolishing, a removal of fuzz from surface of cellulosic fibers, which eliminates pilling making fabrics smoother and cleaner looking. Similarly protease enzymes are developed for wool.

Interesting uses of enzymes are in biotransformation with biocatalytic transformation of one chemical to another. In practice, either intact cells, an extract from such cells or an isolated enzyme might be used as the catalyst system of a specific reaction. Concentration of individual enzymes in cells is typically less than 1 per cent this can now be increased using gene increment techniques. Bulk chemical production by oil-based processes is being replaced by biotransformations, biotechnology competes with chemical synthesis. For example, optical activity of chemicals as of polymer precursors is likely to grow and biotransformation has a particular edge over traditional chemical methods.

Textile Auxiliaries: These are dyes produced by fermentation or from plants in future in the nineteenth century many of colors used to dye textiles came from plants e.g. woad, indigo and madder. Many microorganisms produce pigments during their growth, which are substantive as indicated by permanent staining and associated with mildew growth on textiles and plastics. Some species produce up to 30% of their dry weight as pigment, such microbial pigments are benzoquinone, naphthoquinone, anthraquinone, and perinaphthenone and benzofluoranthenequinone derivatives, resembling in some instances the important group of vat dyes. Microorganisms offer great potential for direct production of novel textile dyes or dye intermediates by controlled fermentation techniques replacing chemical synthesis. Production and evaluation of microbial pigments as textile colorants is currently being investigated at BTTG. Another biotechnological route for producing pigments for use in food, cosmetics or textile industries is from plant cell culture, e.g. red pigment shikonin (cosmetics) is being commercially produced since 1983 in Japan. Shikonin was extracted from roots of five-year-old Lithosperum erythrorhiz plants where it makes up about 1 to 2 percent of dry weight of roots. In tissue culture, pigment yields of about 15 percent of dry weight of root cells have been achieved.

New Analytical Tools: Work on molecular biology at BTTG has led to development of species-specific DNA probes for animal fibers to detect adulteration of high value specialty fibers such as cashmere by much cheaper fibers e.g. wool and yak hair. Rapid methods are being evolved to assist in primeval detection of biodeterioration of textile and other materials. BTTG have shown that presence of viable microorganisms on textiles can be assessed using enzyme luciferase isolated from firefly (Photinus pyralis), which releases light (bioluminescence) in combination with ATP produced by the microorganisms.

Waste Management: Microbes or their enzymes are being used to degrade toxic wastes instead of traditional processes, thus waste treatment is useful industrial calibre of biotechnology. In textile industry color removal from dyehouse effluent, toxic heavy metal compounds and pentachlorophenol used overseas as a rot-proofing treatment of cotton fabrics but washed out during subsequent processing in the UK pose a challenge for disposal. Currently efforts are on to resolve such problems perhaps biotechnology would appear to offer the most effective solutions.

Conclusions: Biotechnology is being treated as upcoming science with enormous commercial implications for many industrial sectors in years to come. It has successfully developed new products, opened up new doors, expedited production and helped to clean up environment. Mainly biotechnology is contributing a lot to textile industries but it current awareness is low. Michael Heseltine recently launched ‘Biotechnology Means Business’ initiative in the UK to inform companies about biotechnology and place them in touch with experts to deploy biotechnology to give a competitive edge to their business to win new markets. E.g. downstream processing after fermentation accounts for at least 70 percent of production costs in biotechnology and there is the need for improved filtration and separation techniques. Hollow fibers and membranes, which separate molecules according to size, are finding increased application in this area.

Enzymes are used in detergents e.g. protease removes stains caused by proteins such as blood, grass, egg and human sweat. Amylase removes starch-based stains such as those prefabricated by potatoes, pasta, rice and custard. Lipase breaks down fats, oils and greases removing stains based on salad oils, butter, fat-based sauces and soups, and certain cosmetics such as lipstick. Cellulase brightens and softens the fabric, and release particles of dirt trapped in the fibers. Briefly biotechnology improves plant varieties used in production of textile fibers and in fiber properties, and derives fibers from animals and health care of the animals along with novel fibers from biopolymers and genetically altered microorganisms. The survismeter is a effective tool to characterize broth fermentation.

References

Biotechnology Means Business: say of the art report on ‘The Textile & Clothing Industries’, 1995, The Biotechnology Unit, DTI, LGC, Queens Rd., Teddington, Middlesex, TW11 0LY, UK. Tiny Book on Enzymes and the Environment, 1993, NovoNordisk A/S, DK – 2880, Bagsvaerd, Denmark.

Glossary: Biotechnology: Use of living organisms or their cellular, sub cellular or molecular constituents to manufacture products and establish processes. DNA: Deoxyribonucleic acid, chemical molecule to carry hereditary information to pass from parent to offspring. DNA Probe: Single DNA strand used to detect a presence of complementary strands of DNA. Enzymes: Protein molecules that speed up specific chemical reactions and remain unchanged. Gene: Unit of heredity composed of DNA.

Genetic Engineering: A range of techniques for manipulating DNA and thereby modifying the genetic structure of living organisms. Transgenesis: Stable incorporation of foreign DNA from one species into another. For example, incorporating genes from a bacterium has developed insect resistant transgenic plants.