Bioinspired Blood and Bacteria Repellent Coating for Medical Devices (VIDEO)
 

Bioinspired Blood and Bacteria Repellent Coating for Medical Devices (VIDEO)
http://cdn.medgadget.com/wp-content/...lp-coating.pngThese glass slides were dipped in blood to demonstrate the effectiveness of the TLP coating. While blood sticks to the untreated slide on the left, the TLP-treated slide on the right emerges entirely clear. (Credit: Harvard’s Wyss Institute)


As Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Founding Director of Harvard’s Wyss Institute stated, “Devising a way to prevent blood clotting without using anticoagulants is one of the holy grails in medicine.”*Even devices that have*been properly analyzed and engineered to serve their*purpose can run into problems once implanted into the body. Cardiac implants like mechanical heart valves and other medical devices come into contact with flowing blood. This can cause a multitude of problems such as blood clotting and*bacterial infection.

To solve this problem, researchers at Wyss took already FDA approved materials and combined them to form a coating that repels both blood and bacteria. Originally, the idea for this coating came from Professor Amy Smith Berylson and her Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces (SLIPS) system, a concept inspired by the carnivorous pitcher plant. The coating is created in a two-step surface-coating process. Coined Tethered-Liquid Perfluorocarbon (TLP), the process is performed*by adding a mo**layer of perfluorocarbon*and then a layer of liquid perfluorocarbon.

This material has already been tested*in vivo*where the team implanted tubing and catheters with this coating into blood vessels of pigs. The results showed ** blood clots for at least eight hours. Furthermore, when the bacteria*Pseudomonas aerugi**sa*was cultured on a coated medical tube, only one in a billion bacteria adhered to the tube.*The scientists even demonstrated*that*the mighty gecko could **t stick to surfaces coated with TLP.





More from from the Wyss Institute: Bioinspired coating for medical devices repels blood and bacteria…

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