A potentially life-saving surgical glue that is highly elastic and adhesive can quickly seal wounds in seconds without the need for common staples or sutures.
The surgical glue, called MeTro, is a development from biomedical engineers at the University of Sydney and biomedical engineers from Harvard University.
MeTro has a high elasticity that can seal wounds in body tissues that need to expand and contract continuously, like the lungs, heart and arteries. Wounds on these types of tissues are prone to re-opening after sealing with staples and sutures.
The glue is also beneficial for wounds that are in hard-to-reach places that have traditionally needed staples or sutures because of body fluids interfering with other sealants.
“MeTro seems to remain stable over the period that wounds need to heal in demanding mechanical conditions and later it degrades without any signs of toxicity; it checks off all the boxes of a highly versatile and efficient surgical sealant with potential also beyond pulmonary and vascular suture and staple-less applications,” director of the Biomaterials Innovation Research Center at Harvard Medical School professor Ali Khademhosseini said in a press release.
When treated with UV light, MeTro takes just 60 seconds to set. It has a built-in degrading enzyme that can customized for the amount of time needed to allow a wound to heal.
“The beauty of the MeTro formulation is that, as soon as it comes in contact with tissue surfaces, it solidifies into a gel-like phase without running away,” Nasim Annabi, lead author of the study, said. “We then further stabilize it by curling it on-site with a short light-mediated cross linking treatment. This allows the sealant to be very accurately place and to tightly bond and interlock with structures on the tissue surface.”
So far, MeTro has quickly and successfully sealed artery incisions in the lungs of rodents and pigs without the use of sutures and staples.
Harvard researchers were also recently inspired by slug mucus to to create an adhesive to eliminate the need for staples and sutures.
One of the researchers, University of Sydney professor Anthony Weiss, suggests that the process in which MeTro works is similar to how silicone sealants work around bathroom and kitchen tiles.
“When you watch MeTro, you can see it act like a liquid, filling the gaps and conforming to the shape of the wound,” Weiss said. “It responds well biologically and interfaces closely with human tissue to promote healing. The gel is easily stored and can b squirted directly onto a wound or cavity.”
The researchers also suggest that the concept of MeTro could be used in emergency situations in addition to in surgical procedures and hopes to start clinical testing soon.
“The potential applications are powerful – from treating serious internal wounds at emergency sites such as following car accidents and in war zones, as well as improving hospital surgeries,” Weiss said.
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Gecko Biomedical receives CE Mark Approval for SETALUM™ Sealant
Paris, France, September 11, 2017 – Gecko Biomedical (“Gecko”), a medical device company developing innovative polymers to support tissue reconstruction, announced today that it has received CE Mark approval for its SETALUM™ Sealant allowing the company to market its technology in Europe.
The SETALUM™ Sealant is a biocompatible, bioresorbable and on-demand activated sealant usable in wet and dynamic environments as an add-on to sutures during vascular surgery. The polymer is applied to tissue in-situ and activated using a proprietary light activation pen.
The technology at the foundation of the SETALUM™ Sealant was developed at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. SETALUM™ Sealant is the most recent successful example of bio-inspired technology in medicine, and is based on the adhesive mechanisms found in nature that work in wet and dynamic environments.
The grant of the CE Mark for the vascular sealant is the first regulatory validation of the safety and performance of Gecko Biomedical’s scalable and innovative polymer platform.
“The SETALUM™ sealant can be precisely and easily applied thanks to its viscosity and hydrophobicity and then activated at will to provide an instant hermetic barrier and effective hemostasis. The key features of this polymer technology were selected with physicians and patients in mind, and significantly improves upon the latest generation of hemostatic agents to become a gold standard in vascular surgery,” said Jean-Marc Alsac, MD, PhD, vascular surgeon at the Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou in Paris, France and the principal investigator of Gecko Biomedical’s BlueSeal clinical study.
The BlueSeal clinical study was a prospective, single-arm and multi-center clinical investigation performed at four French university hospitals and undertaken in patients necessitating a carotid endarterectomy. Performance of the sealant was evaluated by the percentage of immediate hemostasis following clamp removal. Based on a sequential Bayesian design, the recruitment was stopped at 22 enrolled patients given the fulfilled performance criteria and the optimal safety profile of the sealant. Immediate hemostasis was achieved in 85% of patients and all recorded adverse events were found to be representative of those commonly occurring in patients necessitating vascular reconstruction with none considered as related to the sealant.
Christophe Bancel, Gecko’s CEO, said: “We are delighted to receive the CE Mark for our first product, SETALUM™ Sealant, as this will allow us to bring new and innovative solutions to the market to improve patient care. As a result, we are now ramping up our manufacturing capabilities and selection of strategic partners to bring this innovation to patients.”
The company is swiftly expanding its applications, targeting new functionalities and tissue types to develop solutions for new clinical indications and geographic markets.
“Our ability to bring an entire new family of innovative polymers from the bench to the bedside in less than two and a half years, is a testimony of the versatility and scalability of our platform. We are now ready to fully expand, internally and through partnerships, into new therapeutic areas to design disruptive, surgical solutions for patients,” Bancel added.
The SETALUM™ Sealant is a biocompatible, bioresorbable and on-demand activated sealant usable in wet and dynamic environments as an add-on to sutures during vascular surgery. The polymer is applied to tissue in-situ and activated using a proprietary light activation pen.
The technology at the foundation of the SETALUM™ Sealant was developed at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. SETALUM™ Sealant is the most recent successful example of bio-inspired technology in medicine, and is based on the adhesive mechanisms found in nature that work in wet and dynamic environments.
The grant of the CE Mark for the vascular sealant is the first regulatory validation of the safety and performance of Gecko Biomedical’s scalable and innovative polymer platform.
“The SETALUM™ sealant can be precisely and easily applied thanks to its viscosity and hydrophobicity and then activated at will to provide an instant hermetic barrier and effective hemostasis. The key features of this polymer technology were selected with physicians and patients in mind, and significantly improves upon the latest generation of hemostatic agents to become a gold standard in vascular surgery,” said Jean-Marc Alsac, MD, PhD, vascular surgeon at the Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou in Paris, France and the principal investigator of Gecko Biomedical’s BlueSeal clinical study.
The BlueSeal clinical study was a prospective, single-arm and multi-center clinical investigation performed at four French university hospitals and undertaken in patients necessitating a carotid endarterectomy. Performance of the sealant was evaluated by the percentage of immediate hemostasis following clamp removal. Based on a sequential Bayesian design, the recruitment was stopped at 22 enrolled patients given the fulfilled performance criteria and the optimal safety profile of the sealant. Immediate hemostasis was achieved in 85% of patients and all recorded adverse events were found to be representative of those commonly occurring in patients necessitating vascular reconstruction with none considered as related to the sealant.
Christophe Bancel, Gecko’s CEO, said: “We are delighted to receive the CE Mark for our first product, SETALUM™ Sealant, as this will allow us to bring new and innovative solutions to the market to improve patient care. As a result, we are now ramping up our manufacturing capabilities and selection of strategic partners to bring this innovation to patients.”
The company is swiftly expanding its applications, targeting new functionalities and tissue types to develop solutions for new clinical indications and geographic markets.
“Our ability to bring an entire new family of innovative polymers from the bench to the bedside in less than two and a half years, is a testimony of the versatility and scalability of our platform. We are now ready to fully expand, internally and through partnerships, into new therapeutic areas to design disruptive, surgical solutions for patients,” Bancel added.
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