Nanofiber hydrogel together with snake venom can stop bleeding quickly

SB50 which is a kind of hydrogel, incorporates batroxobin, venom produced by two species of South American pit viper. It can be injected as liquid and becomes a gel which can get a wound closed and promotes clotting in seconds. Rice University scientists think this nanofiber hydrogel infused with snake venom may be a good device to stop bleeding quickly. The researchers, including Rice chemist Jeffrey Hartgerink, lead author Vivek Kumar and their colleagues published their findings in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering. According to them, the hydrogel may be quite useful for surgeries, especially for patients who take anti-coagulant drugs to thin their blood. Isn't interesting that something deadly can be turned into something that may save people's life? Batroxobin has been taken as a coagulant, which can encourages blood to clot since 1936. It is used in many therapies to remove excess fibrin proteins from the blood to treat thrombosis and as a topical hemostat. It is also used to iagnostic tool to determine blood-clotting time in the presence of heparin (an anti-coagulant drug). That's important - There are many things which can trigger blood coagulation, but they usually stop work or work slowly and poorly when you're on heparin, therefore causing problems when bleeding. "Heparin blocks the function of thrombin, an enzyme that begins a cascade of reactions that lead to the clotting of blood," Hartgerink said. "Batroxobin is also an enzyme with similar function to thrombin, but its function is not blocked by heparin. This is important because surgical bleeding in patients taking heparin can be a serious problem. The use of batroxobin allows us to get around this problem because it can immediately start the clotting process, regardless of whether heparin is there or not." During tests, the new material stopped a wound from bleeding in six seconds and didn't reopen it. They also tested other conditions, such as the hydrogel without batroxobin, the batroxobin without the hydrogel, a current clinical hemostat known as GelFoam and an alternative self-assembling hemostat known as Puramatrix and found that none were as effective, especially in the presence of anti-coagulants. SB50 is thought to be great potential to stop surgical bleeding. It won't make batroxobin work alone. Read more:http://www.cusabio.com/Polyclonal-Antibody/MAGEA10-Antibody-FITC-conjugated-11098210.html