A hydrogel made of the sticky, gel-like substance produced by snails may provide relief and healing from canker sores and other oral wounds, according to an article recently published in The Harvard Gazette.
Snails secrete a gooey mucus that sticks to wet surfaces that can stretch up to 15 times their original length when threatened, so it was no surprise that Harvard University researchers turned to the mollusk to create a biomaterial patch that heals wounds in wet environments. "We are excited to translate this technology to impact millions of patients and their dentists in improving their oral health," Wu said in the story. They used the snail mucus to create a nontoxic adhesive patch comprising 90% water from an algae-derived polymer, which was successfully used to heal animals' surgical wounds, according to the story.
From there, David Tansui Wu, a professor of oral medicine, infection, and immunity at Harvard, focused on using the patch for oral applications, specifically for canker sores, oral lichen planus, and surgical wounds.
"Current treatment approaches are mainly palliative and often ineffective due to inadequate contact time of the therapeutic agent with the lesions," Wu said.
Benjamin Freedman (left) and David Tiansui Wu, developer of DenTAl. Image courtesy of The Harvard Gazette.
Wu teamed up with Benjamin Freedman, who was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard's Mooney Lab, and faculty collaborators at the Massachusetts General Hospital departments of dermatology and oral and maxillofacial surgery to develop Dental Tough Adhesive or DenTAl. Their findings were published in the Journal of Dental Research, and they are working toward obtaining clearance for the patch from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
In the future, they hope the hydrogel can be used for sealing surgical sites, like tooth extraction sites, oral wound regeneration, drug delivery, and more, according to the story.
"Our vision is to one day develop sutureless wound repair," Wu said.
