{"id":3533,"date":"2022-01-23T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-23T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=3533"},"modified":"2022-01-10T05:04:34","modified_gmt":"2022-01-10T05:04:34","slug":"tendons-see-potential-new-hydrogel-repair-tech-inspired-by-slug-slime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/tendons-see-potential-new-hydrogel-repair-tech-inspired-by-slug-slime\/","title":{"rendered":"Tendons See Potential New Hydrogel Repair Tech Inspired By Slug Slime"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Athletes and workers who undergo regular physical stress will be the first to tell you the dangers of injuring your tendons<\/em>. These tissues connect muscle to bone and are thus crucial to your everyday movements. As such, protecting your tendons from damage, or healing injuries to them in unfortunate cases, is of the utmost importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, healing injuries to these tissues are far from easy and hassle-free. For one, they require treatment for pretty long periods of time; this goes double for elderly patients, who also bear the highest risk of gaining injuries like these. It also doesn\u2019t help that injuries of this type are also usually accompanied by inflammation and swelling, among other sources of pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Injuries to parts of the body that facilitate movement are commonplace for athletes across the age spectrum. (Singh, 2020) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Much like treatments for the rest of the body, tendons are also a focal point for medical researchers that aim to shorten the time it takes to heal, increase the effectiveness of healing, or sometimes both. One such team of researchers belonging to Harvard\u2019s Wyss Institute for Biologically-Inspired Engineering may have found a peculiar source of inspiration for their potential new method for treating tendon injuries. Their research, odd as it may seem, involves slugs and is published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research team, which is led by Dr. David Mooney and includes first author Benjamin Freedman, took inspiration from the dusky arion slug (Arion fuscus<\/em>, sometimes synonymous with Arion subfuscus<\/em>), a slug which lives across northern Europe. A. fuscus<\/em> lives across tne whole swath, while A. subfuscus<\/em> is restricted to areas in northwestern Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The dusky arion slug (Arion subfuscus<\/em> in the image above) lives in territories under Germany and the Czech Republic. (Ma\u0148as, 2004) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by the intrepid slugs, the team successfully made an adhesive gel years ago they called \u201cTough Gel Adhesives<\/em>\u201d (TGAs), with the paper describing it having been published in the journal Science<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, following up with their previous research, Mooney and team now made a hydrogel using the TGAs that are applicable to tendon repair. The new material, coined \u201cJanus Tough Adhesives<\/em>\u201d (JTAs) and named after the Roman god with two faces, is now set to tackle tendon injuries with the help of its properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[Janus Tough Adhesives] […] offer a new opportunity to overcome current insufficiencies in tendon regeneration across multiple types of injuries, and could help many patients regain more normal tendon functions and mobility.\u201d<\/p>David Mooney, Ph.D., on the effectiveness of the potential new hydrogel treatment for tendon injuries<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The JTAs are composed of two distinct surfaces, thus their special naming. One surface, which clings to the damaged surfaces of tendons in order to keep them together to facilitate healing, is made of a material called chitosan<\/em>, a sugar derived from shellfish and similar shelled sea creatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opposite side, however, does the exact opposite and is responsible for keeping the tendon gliding against neighboring tissue during movement, and thus also helps to ensure that mobility is restored as much as possible. This \u201csmooth\u201d side is made of just the bare hydrogel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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