Rapid Self-Healing Hydrogels
May 15, 2012 | Terry Sharrer
See the video in this piece; it describes how bioengineers at the University of California San Diego developed hydrogels with “dangling side chain” molecules, in a low pH environment (as in the human stomach), that bind to each other like Velcro. It doesn’t say how these hydrogel sutures can be attached to tissue so that, say, it could close a gastric ulcer, but it may be that the dangling side chains grip the tissue as well. MORE
Image Credit: Joshua Knoff / UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering