REAL LIFE NEWS: GLUE MADE FROM MUSSELS KNITS WOUNDS WITHOUT SCARRING
by Hazed
A sticky substance that is secreted by mussels could help glue wounds together, to close them without scarring.
Skin is built on a scaffolding made up of collagen. Scars form when this is broken apart, and instead of repairing itself neatly in the original basket-weave arrangement, the collagen fibres grow back in lumpy bundles.
A skin protein called decorin is involved with collagen organisation, so if it can be applied to a wound it should reduce scarring. But it is very hard to synthesize because of its highly complex structure.
So researchers from the Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea have come up with a simplified form of decorin, by combining it with a collagen-binding molecule and the mussel gloop.
The result was a glue which was tested on rats. The rodents had deep, 8-millimetre wide wounds. The glue was spread over the wounds and covered with a clear plastic film; a control group just had plastic put on the wounds, without the glue.
After 11 days, 99% of the wounds in the treated rats had closed, compared with 78% in the control group. After 28 days, the treated rates were fully recovered with virtually no scarring visible, whereas the control rats had thick, purple scars. (See images of the scars at the source link below.)
Examination of the treated areas under a microscope confirmed that the collagen fibres had knitted together in their original basket-weave arrangement. The new skin also showed development of hair follicles, blood vessels, oil glands and other structures not regenerated in scars.
Impressive results, but there’s still a lot of work needed before the technique can be tried on humans. Rats skin is loose, whereas human skin is tight; the rodents also heal better and have less scarring.
The next stage is to test the glue in pigs, whose skin is closer to that of humans.
