Closing up wounds typically calls for sutures or staples, but neither are able to create a complete seal. And when it comes to internal injuries that are harder to get to and wounds on organs that move a significant amount, such as lungs, treatment becomes even more difficult. Sealants offer a solution to those problems, but none of those available meet all of the requirements of an effective surgical tool. However, researchers have just developed a new type of sealant that may actually check all of the boxes. Their work was published this week in Science Translational Medicine. "A good surgical sealant needs to have a combination of characteristics: it needs to be elastic, adhesive, non-toxic and biocompatible," Nasim Annabi, an author of the study and a researcher at Northeastern University, said in a statement. "Most sealants on the market possess one or two of these characteristics, but not all of them. We set out to engineer a material that could have all of t...
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