Light-activated glue to replace sutures..

A scientist has developed a glue that could mean the end of sutures. Maria Pereira has created a surgical glue that can mend broken hearts. Sutures are time-consuming, damage tissue and are technically challenging," says Maria Pereira, head of research at Paris-based Gecko Biomedical, whose bio-inspired alternative it says can replace stitches. Its adhesive is viscous, hydrophobic, biodegradable and cured by LED light. Unlike other glues, which can be washed away by water, it can be placed in wet environments such as the heart, where 
it works as both a sealant and a scaffold for tissue to grow over. Pereira, 30, invented the glue in 2010 while a bioengineering PhD student in the MIT Portugal Program. Doctors at Boston Children's Hospital had approached her supervisor, Jeff Karp of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, with a problem: how to close defects in a newborn baby's heart without sutures. A newborn's heart is as large as its fist, so operations are extremely delicate. Pereira looked to nature for inspiration. "Understanding the basic principles 
of how things work is very important in developing new technologies," she says. Her sealant can stay sticky inside a beating pig's heart by mimicking the viscous, hydrophobic secretions of snails and sandcastle worms. This breakthrough as published in the wired states that Karp and a group of prominent scientists and entrepreneurs founded Gecko Biomedical in 2012, hiring Pereira as head of research. The first product made from the adhesive, GB02, acts as an adjunct to sutures in vascular reconstruction surgery and will go into clinical trials this spring, with the aim of securing regulatory approval in the first half of 2017. The goal of the company is to make surgery simpler and to change how it is done, the company is also working on another product GB04, which could end the need for sutures altogether.