UTAH: IT HAS been billed as "superglue from the sea" - a new synthetic adhesive based on a natural glue from a sea worm could help doctors fix shattered bones in the future, reports CLAIRE O'CONNELL
The inspiration for the glue is the sandcastle worm, an intertidal creature that produces glue to stick together bits of sand and shell, and builds itself a home.
Now bioengineers at the University of Utah have come up with a man-made version of the sticky substance and they hope it will have medical applications, particularly to help realign small bone fragments after they have shattered.
Adhesives tend not to stick firmly on wet, slippery surfaces, but the worm-inspired glue worked well in tests on cubes of shop-bought cow bones.
The researchers hope that within a decade the glue could be used in humans to help small bones to knit together in the correct alignment, or stick down scaffolds on which new bone tissue can grow.
The synthetic glue, which is based on polymers that cross-link with each other and mimics the side-chains seen in the worm glue, could also carry therapeutics like pain-killers, antibiotics or even stem cells to the site of injury, the researchers suggest.
They now aim to make more biocompatible versions of the glue that dissolve over time. "Ultimately, we intend to make it so it is replaced by natural bone over time," says lead researcher Russell Stewart. "We don't want to have the glue permanently in the fracture."
