MIT Researchers Invent Double-Sided Surgical Tape Inspired By Spiders

Scientists at MIT have devised a new type of surgical tape that is inspired by a sticky substance that spiders use to catch their prey. The tape that the engineers have developed is double-sided and is designed to seal tissues together rapidly. The tape has been tested in rat and pig tissue, and the researchers have shown that their new tape can tightly bind tissues such as lung and the intestines in only five seconds.

The hope is that the new tape may one day be able to replace surgical sutures that don't work well in all tissues and can cause complications for some patients. The team says that there are 230 million major surgeries all around the world each year, and many of them require sutures to close the wound that can cause stress on tissues leading to pain, infection, and scars.

The double-sided tape can be used to attach implantable medical devices into tissues, including the heart, according to researchers. The tape also works faster than tissue glues, which normally takes several minutes to bind. The glue can also drip onto other parts of the body.

The team says that forming a tight seal between tissues is very difficult because of the water on the surface of tissues that interfere with adhesion. Surgical glues diffuse adhesive molecules in the water to bind the two tissue surfaces together, but the process can take several minutes or longer.

To create the tape, the team was inspired by a sticky material that spiders use to capture prey in wet situations. The spider glue uses charged polysaccharides that can absorb water from the surface of an insect, almost instantly creating a small, dry patch the blue can adhere to. To mimic that, the team used a material that absorbs water from wet tissues and then rapidly binds the tissue together. The take also uses gelatin or chitosan to last inside the body.