New super-glue could mend broken hearts

Scientists have developed a new super-glue that could mend broken hearts and improve treatment of congenital heart defects and other cardiac problems.
The glue bonds to heart tissue, and is as strong as stitches or staples, sealing wounds while avoiding complications, researchers said.
Sutures take too much time to stitch and can cause stress on fragile heart tissue, and currently available clinical adhesives are either too toxic or tend to lose their sticking power in the presence of blood or under dynamic conditions, such as in a beating heart.
Researchers from Boston Children's Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed a bio-inspired adhesive that could rapidly attach biodegradable patches inside a beating heart - in the exact place where congenital holes in the heart occur, such as with ventricular heart defects.

Recognising that many creatures in nature have secretions that are viscous and repel water, enabling them to attach under wet and dynamic conditions, the researchers developed a material with these properties that also is biodegradable, elastic and bio-compatible.
According to researchers, the degradable patches secured with the glue remained attached even at increased heart rates and blood pressure.

"This adhesive platform addresses all of the drawbacks of previous systems in that it works in the presence of blood and moving structures," said Pedro del Nido, Chief of Cardiac Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital, co-senior study author.
"It should provide the physician with a completely new, much simpler technology and a new paradigm for tissue reconstruction to improve the quality of life of patients following surgical procedures," said del Nido.

Unlike current surgical adhesives, this new adhesive maintains very strong sticking power when in the presence of blood, and even in active environments.
"This study demonstrated that the adhesive was strong enough to hold tissue and patches onto the heart equivalent to suturing," said the study's co-first author Nora Lang.
Importantly, its adhesive abilities are activated with ultra-violent (UV) light, providing an on-demand, anti-bleeding seal within five seconds of UV light application when applied to high-pressure large blood vessels and cardiac wall defects.
"When we attached patches coated with our adhesive to the walls of a beating heart, the patches remained despite the high pressures of blood flowing through the heart and blood vessels," said Maria N Pereira, co-first study author.

The study was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.