;Resize=(1200,627)&hash=d88f85e2be6b8ad48944dc8d2c44e86a909ce67d92ce05adbbd1fe14c2156bce "Slugs with super powers: According to researchers, they could soon save lives")
Slugs generally have a rather bad reputation as a pest in the vegetable patch. But in bionics, researchers see properties that are of great interest in medicine.
Nature as a teacher: Innovative technologies are often copied from fauna and flora. Bionics is the crossover of biology and technology. American bioengineers who took a closer look at the behavior of a certain slug species also wanted to learn from nature. The protein secretion of the light brown slug serves them as a blueprint for a wound adhesive that offers new possibilities for human medicine, according to the researchers’ vision.
While other animals in need have an escape reflex or become paralyzed with fear, the light brown slug sweats a tough protein secretion. This very special “fear sweat” acts like an extremely efficient natural superglue. With this sticky “weapon” the snail can stuff its predators’ mouths or glue itself so firmly to the ground that it cannot be easily carried away.
The slime of the slug is particularly strong
The snail tactics used in the animal kingdom are not particularly original: Centipedes, for example, use strong bio-glues to catch prey, mussels to cling to rocks in the sea, and barnacles to attach themselves to ships. The peculiarity of the snail secretion: It is particularly sticky and elastic. These properties aroused the curiosity of bioengineers at the well-known Harvard University in Cambridge. As early as 2017, a study by the “Mooney Lab” there caused an international sensation because the researchers developed a material that, thanks to its flexibility, adheres well even to moist and dynamic areas in the human body such as the liver or the beating heart – inspired by the secretion of the human body Light brown slug.
Slugs with their super powers are interesting for surgery
To create their innovative wound glue, the researchers collected the protein secretion from the upper body of frightened slugs. The super mix of water, proteins and carbohydrates was then analyzed and recreated in the laboratory. The result is called “Tough Gel Adhesives”, or TGA for short. The advantage over conventional surgical adhesives such as cyanoacrylate: the snail adhesive has a stronger adhesive force, is more elastic and less toxic than the known alternatives. The organic material owes its superpowers to its two-layer structure: the sticky layer is charged with positive ions and in this way forms strong chemical bonds with the negatively charged tissue surfaces. The other layer is a hydrogel, i.e. a water-based polymer, as is known from contact lenses, for example. Like a shock absorber in a car, this gel absorbs the energy that could otherwise dislodge the adhesive.
The vision: In the future, surgeons will be able to use the super glue to seal wounds on organs or vessels more effectively instead of suturing them, fix cardiac pacemakers directly to the heart, or inject the material to heal deep wounds without traditional surgeries. It will probably be some time before that happens, however, because there is still no approved medical product based on the research results. Further research is needed to develop a body-compatible agent.
At the beginning of 2022, the biotechnology team from Harvard took an important step in this direction: together with the pharmaceutical company Novartis, they worked on the new material family “Janus Tough Adhesives” (JTA). The first intended area of application is tendon injuries. Like its predecessor, the sticky side is not made of synthetic materials but is coated with chitosan, a sugar found in shrimp shells. Clinical trials in living humans are the next step to ensure that JTA is reliably biocompatible.