Post-surgery Protection

After surgery, leakage from sutures can be life-threatening. At MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, principal research scientist Natalie Artzi and Elazer Edelman ’78, SM ’79, PhD ’84, Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor of Health Sciences and Technology, are designing an adhesive material that can be optimized to thrive in different tissue microenvironments. Having demonstrated that the sealant’s effectiveness depends on the disease state of tissue, the researchers—both also affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital—are at work on a formulation that titrates itself to the tissue, to provide a personalized solution for each patient.