The development of biomedical glues is an important, yet challenging task as seemingly mutually exclusive properties need to be combined in one material, i.e. strong adhesion and adaption to remodeling processes in healing tissue. Here, we report a biocompatible and biodegradable protein-based adhesive with high adhesion strengths. The maximum strength reaches 16.5 ± 2.2 MPa on hard substrates, which is comparable to that of commercial cyanoacrylate superglue and higher than other protein-based adhesives by at least one order of magnitude. Moreover, the strong adhesion on soft tissues qualifies the adhesive as biomedical glue outperforming some commercial products. Robust mechanical properties are realized without covalent bond formation during the adhesion process. A complex consisting of cationic supercharged polypeptides and anionic aromatic surfactants with lysine to surfactant molar ratio of 1:0.9 is driven by multiple supramolecular interactions enabling such strong adhesion. We demonstrate the glue’s robust performance in vitro and in vivo for cosmetic and hemostasis applications and accelerated wound healing by comparison to surgical wound closures.
Active colloidal catalysts inspired by glutathione peroxidase (GPx) were synthesized by integration of catalytically active selenium (Se) moieties into aqueous microgels.A diselenide crosslinker (Se X-linker) was successfully synthesized and incorporated into microgels through precipitation polymerization, along with the conventional crosslinker N,N'methylenebis(acrylamide) (BIS). Diselenide bonds within the microgels were cleaved through oxidation by H 2 O 2 and converted to seleninic acid whilst maintaining the intact microgel microstructure.T hrough this approach catalytically active microgels with variable amounts of seleninic acid were synthesized.R emarkably,t he microgels exhibited higher catalytic activity and selectivity at lowr eaction temperatures than the molecular Se catalyst in amodel oxidation reaction of acrolein to acrylic acid and methyl acrylate.
Complex coacervation enables important wet adhesion processes in natural and artificial systems. However, existed synthetic coacervate adhesives show limited wet adhesion properties, non‐thermoresponsiveness, and inferior biodegradability, greatly hampering their translations. Herein, by harnessing supramolecular assembly and rational protein design, we present a temperature‐sensitive wet bioadhesive fabricated through recombinant protein and surfactant. Mechanical performance of the bioglue system is actively tunable with thermal triggers. In cold condition, adhesion strength of the bioadhesive was only about 50 kPa. By increasing temperature, the strength presented up to 600 kPa, which is remarkably stronger than other biological counterparts. This is probably due to the thermally triggered phase transition of the engineered protein and the formation of coacervate, thus leading to the enhanced wet adhesion bonding.
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