Hydrogels

Managing diabetes usually involves regular shots, but soon patients might only need injections a few times a year. Stanford has developed a hydrogel-based delivery system that slowly releases drugs over months to control diabetes and even weight.

Ordinarily, when treating chronic wounds, caregivers go to great lengths to keep them free of bacteria. An experimental new dressing, however, actually introduces bacteria to help such wounds heal.

Researchers have developed a plant-based hydrogel to create shape-changing, navigable small-scale robots with potential applications in biomedicine, including conducting medical procedures and delivering therapeutic cargo to cells and tissues.

The skin ulcers that diabetics often develop on their feet are slow to heal, sometimes to the point that they become infected and require foot amputation. A magnetic gel could keep that from happening, as it triples the healing speed of such wounds.

Researchers have created a superabsorbent hydrogel that can pull moisture from the air, even in desert conditions. The new material opens the door to creating an effective, sustainable method of addressing the important issue of water scarcity.

Leaking sutures after abdominal surgery are a potentially life-threatening complication that surgeons might not pick up immediately. Researchers have developed a hydrogel patch that can rapidly detects postop leaks at suture sites inside the abdomen.

It's a sad fact that burn victims often feel a great deal of pain when the dressings on their wounds are removed. A new hydrogel-based dressing could change that, however, as it easily releases from the skin when cooled.

Starting with fibers taken from pig tissue, researchers developed dissolving sutures that can be loaded with molecular sensors or medication. The hope is that they could speed healing and/or alert doctors when something is wrong at a surgical site.

In new hope for aggressive brain cancers, injecting a drug-laden hydrogel into the brain after tumors were surgically removed was found to launch a combined chemo- and immunotherapy attack, preventing cancer from returning in 100% of treated mice.

MIT scientists have developed a new wearable patch that can deliver drugs through the skin more efficiently and painlessly. The device uses pulses of ultrasound to pry open the skin, which could improve topical medications or even tattoos.

3D biopriting is gaining popularity but, to work effectively, the “inks” used must be firmed up using UV light or chemical processes. Researchers have developed a new bioink that hardens at body temperature, making it safer for use in artificial organs.

If left untreated, chronic wounds such as diabetic skin ulcers can become infected, ultimately leading to amputations or even death. A new "smart" bandage is designed to help keep that from happening, by both watching and treating such injuries.