The future of medical creativity is in Startups

While exploring new possibilities of work in biological fields outside of academia, I came across a whole range of companies and biological startups that are developing fascinating new equipment and technology. I feel like these true life-saving ideas do not get enough attention. The world would enjoy knowing that these ideas, advancements and solutions exist.

In this piece, I want to focus on medical adhesives for skin and internal tissue. I recently read about the startup Adhesys Medical for a task and the more I read the more in awe I was. I found it incredible that they are looking to solve a problem that seems so trivial, but before this, I did not see it as a problem that needed to be solved.

Developing medical adhesives

Adhesys Medical is in the advanced stages of developing two types of surgical glues, one for internal and one for external use. These glues have the potential use for sealing wounds, stopping internal bleeding, connecting tissues, and closing incisions after a surgery. It could be used pretty much any time there is something opened or disconnected in the body that shouldn't be.

Up to now, these tasks are done mainly by stitching, stapling and cauterizing the openings in the body, which leave scars, take a long time to heal and have the potential of secondary issues.

By coincidence, I found out about Adhesys around the time I had to deal with stitching and cauterization. I had a mole in my face removed a few months ago, which needed two stitches and cauterization leading to a considerable scar. I can, therefore, testify how helpful it would be to have a more appropriate device to close the wound. And I can only imagine how much better surgeries would be once this is available.

Applications of medical adhesives

On a more serious note, surgical glues have the potential of increasing the safety and success of various cardiovascular surgeries. Severe bleeding occurs in around 7% of these surgeries, which in turn significantly increases postoperative mortality. Having a more effective sealant would decrease the incidence of this problem.

Other body parts that are currently hard to close due to being too wet are hernias and pancreas. A more appropriate adhesive would also decrease complications and mortalities during procedures in these organs.

In addition, they are also looking into adding other active ingredients to the adhesive, such antibiotics, which would be active at the most appropriate location: the would itself.

It is a long process

As wonderful as all of these might sound, it might still take a few years for these devices to be available in the market. Take a minute to reflect, this startup started operating in 2007. In today’s world each product still has to go through thorough regulations, evaluation, and testing before commercial production can begin. Their website does not have any indication of when the product could be available.

While reading extensively about the topic, I kept thinking: How come no one has thought of this before? It kind of sounds like something that should have already been developed ages ago. But then, while looking through other medical startups, I realized we still have a lot of advancing to do in the medical field and if it wasn’t for the current startup culture that is booming right now, we would probably have to wait even longer for technologies like this to go from ideas to reality.

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This article was originally published on Medium.

Fernanda Fadel writes about multiple scientific topics, from medical issues to genetic controversies, from conservation to animal welfare. Her text that got the closest to going slightly viral is this one on the animal welfare issues in the Netflix series Tiger King.