Scientists at the University of Washington, Seattle, have created a synthetic substance that can fully resist the body’s natural attack response to foreign objects. They say that devices such as artificial heart valves, prostheses and breast implants could be coated with this polymer to prevent the body from rejecting an implanted object. Their findings, demonstrated in mice, were published in the journal, Nature Biotechnology.
“It has applications for so many different medical implants, because we literally put hundreds of devices into the body,” said Buddy Ratner, co-author and a UW professor of bioengineering and of chemical engineering. “We couldn’t achieve this level of excellence in healing before we had this synthetic hydrogel.”
The team implanted the polymer substance, known as a hydrogel, into the bodies of mice. The hydrogel was made from a polymer with both a positive and negative charge, which serves to deflect all proteins from sticking to its surface. Scientists have found that proteins appearing on the surface of a medical implant indicate that a collagen wall will form around the device. But, after three months, the team found that collagen was evenly distributed in the tissue around the polymer, suggesting that the mice bodies didn’t detect the polymer at all.
They report that this is the first non-porous, synthetic substance demonstrating that no collagen capsule forms, which could have positive implications for implantable materials, tissue scaffolds, and medical devices, and plan to test this in humans, likely by working with manufacturers to coat an implantable device with the polymer, then measure its ability to ward off protein build-up.
