Researchers have created stitches loaded with anti-inflammatory drugs to deliver medication directly to an injury.
Undergraduate researcher Mieya Kirby was inspired to seek alternatives that would minimise inflammation of sutured vessels, based on her mother’s experience of undergoing breast reconstruction surgery.
She is now working with chemist Sharon K Hamilton at Ouachita Baptist University to develop the innovation.
Mieya explained: ‘If there’s inflammation at the site of suture, that can quickly close up that blood vessel, and those sutures can fail. This can cause scars, reopening of wounds, infections or, as in the case of breast reconstruction surgery, death of surrounding tissue.’
In Hamilton’s laboratory, Kirby is working with electrospun polymers, which have emerged as an attractive material for wound-healing technologies.
Under high voltage, polymer solutions are drawn into delicate nanofibers that can be moulded into different shapes, including dissolvable stitches, and provide a surface for regenerating tissues.
Polydioxanone, a polymer already used for dissolvable surgical sutures, does not interact with living tissues and maintains its strength for weeks.
After the wound heals, these sutures break down, forming simpler biomolecules that are metabolised by the body or excreted in urine.
Kirby said: ‘New collagen is laid down between the two- and four-week mark, so you need something that won’t be released immediately.’
The team mitigated the quick-release problem by blending polydioxanone with another polymer that binds anti-inflammatory drugs during electrospinning.
The drugs are attached to the new polymer by covalent bonds. The bonds break down gradually, ensuring that the attached anti-inflammatory drug is released into the wound slowly over weeks.
They are now experimenting with different polymers, probing how fast they release drugs and how adjustable those release rates are.
These new stitches could eliminate the need to remember to take oral pain medication.
By reducing inflammation and limiting scarring, they could also help increase the success rates of anastomosis procedures.
