Slugs, Sandcastle worms, and hearts

An important job as a graduate student and a scientist is to stay up to date on the important developments in your field and in science in general. This paper came out last month and combines several of the things that I like best. 

Super glues is really cool. It sticks stuff together super fast and super strong. It was developed in teh 1940's and we use it on lots of stuff. In the 1970's it acquired an additional important use as a replacement for messy dressings for medics in Vietnam. Since then medical glues have been increasing in use and importance. 



One problem faced by doctors who want to use medical glues is that most glues don't stick to blood, and during surgery blood happens. Another problem especially for doctors working on the heart is that the thing you want to glue keeps moving. Normally with glue you are supposed to hold the two things you want to stick together immobile until the glue sets. Clearly this won't work well for the heart. This group wanted to develop a glue that could be used in heart surgery. They way they went about it is quite clever and I like how they describe it in the paper "We were inspired by the insect footpad as well as the viscous secretions from slugs and sand-castle worms that include water-immiscible components that are not easily washed out in aqueous environments; these fluids can thus create stable adhesive bonds underwater." (Lang 2015). It may be my new goal to write a similar sentence for publication. To the right you will see what a sand castle worm house looks like (wikipedia)

Essentially they say slugs are sticky, sandcastle worms are sticky. Both are hard to wash away with water. Let's use whatever they do. To the left, a sandcastle worm (wikipedia)
They worked out a glue that was flexible and light-activated (like the glue they use to stick braces to your teeth. Additionally, by good planning and great chemistry the two components were already approved for medical use or as they say "PGSA is composed of two naturally occurring monomers: glycerol, a basic building block of lipids, and sebacic acid, a metabolic intermediate of fatty acids. Both glycerol and sebacic acid exist in U.S. Food and Drug Administration." (Lang et al.) Possibly not quite what they meant, but I'm glad that glycerol exists at the FDA. 

In their paper they walk through the development of their glue and demonstrate its efficacy in heart surgery like repairing damaged blood vessels and heart wall defects. This is an important breakthrough in medical glue and will likely be used in more procedures than just heart surgery. And all of this is the result of scientists playing with slugs and other sticky bugs.

Take that all you who disliked my plastic bug collection. (right snail trail, Wonderopolis)

For more information check out the paper or some of the press release information surrounding 
it. Lang et al. "A Blood-Resistant Surgical Glue for Minimally Invasive Repair of Vessels and Heart Defects" Science 2015