Several elastin-based adhesives, blood-derived fibrin sealants, and other naturally derived adhesive matrices have been developed, but require laborious and time-consuming pre-treatment by heat or UV light irradiation to prime covalent bond formation risking secondary damage to the traumatized tissues 13– 16. One example for this is wound healing where proteases are upregulated in the matrix microenvironment and actively degrade both exogenous entities and native components 12. Biodegradability can be implemented into glues by the utilization of biomacromolecules as adhesive threads since they are degraded by biochemical processes on reasonable timescales. In addition, biodegradability needs to be considered for practical applications. However, they failed to deliver strong adhesion strengths under ambient conditions and moreover often require hard-to-prepare or irritating components.Įspecially the latter should be avoided in glues employed in biomedicine. Recently, systems based on supramolecular interfacial bond formation, such as catechol or host-guest motifs, were introduced 9– 11.
This is achieved by in situ polymerization or crosslinking of reactive monomers that form permanent, non-adaptive covalent bonds or networks 7, 8. Traditionally, polymer adhesives develop high adhesion strengths through coating asperities and retarding the fracture of adhesive joints. Strong adhesives in both dry and wet conditions play an important role in many technical 1– 3 and clinical applications 4– 6. 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. 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. Robust mechanical properties are realized without covalent bond formation during the adhesion process. Moreover, the strong adhesion on soft tissues qualifies the adhesive as biomedical glue outperforming some commercial products.
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. Here, we report a biocompatible and biodegradable protein-based adhesive with high adhesion strengths. strong adhesion and adaption to remodeling processes in healing tissue. 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.