hydrogels tagged posts

Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine scientists (WFIRM) have developed a method to bioprint a type of cartilage that could someday help restore knee function damaged by arthritis or injury.

This cartilage, known as fibrocartilage, helps connect tendons or ligaments or bones and is primarily found in the meniscus in the knee. The meniscus is the tough, rubbery cartilage that acts as a shock absorber in the knee joint. Degeneration of the meniscus tissue affects millions of patients and arthroscopic partial meniscectomy is one of the most common orthopedic operations performed. Besides surgery, there is a lack of available treatment options.

In this latest proof-of-concept ...

Scientists model how synthetic gels can tune body’s inflammatory response. Hydrogels for healing, synthesized from the molecules up by Rice University bioengineers, are a few steps closer to the clinic.

Rice researchers and collaborators at Texas Heart Institute (THI) have established a baseline set of injectable hydrogels that promise to help heal wounds, deliver drugs and treat cancer...

Electric Eel-Inspired Device Reaches 110 Volts: This photo depicts the printed, high voltage implementation of the artificial electric organ. A 3-D bioprinter was used to deposit arrays of gel precursor droplets onto plastic substrates, which were then cured with a UV light to convert them into solid gels. Alternating high-salinity and low-salinity gels (red and blue gels, respectively) were printed onto one substrate, and alternating cation-selective and anion-selective gels (green and yellow gels, respectively) were printed onto a second substrate. When overlaid, these gels connect to form a conductive pathway of 612 tetrameric gel cells that can be used to generate up to 110 volts. Credit: Anirvan Guha and Thomas Schroeder

Using ion gradients across hydrogels, researchers developed a ‘s...

Concept of electrocuring adhesive.

Inspired by limitations of biomimetic glues in wet environments Voltaglue has many apps incl:
– gluing metal panels under water eg underwater pipe repairs;
– Replacing sutures when there is a need to join body tissues together during surgery;
– Tailoring the properties of the adhesive to be more gel-like or rubber-like which would work well in vibrating or damp environments

In future, surgeons could use biocompatible glue patches to join 2 pieces of internal body tissue together in 1-2 minutes, instead of sutures which often require 15 to 20 minutes of careful stitching. Assistant Professor Terry Steele said it took them over a year to develop an adhesive that could work under wet conditions such as in the human body or underwater.

Diazirine electrochemis...