Imagine that you are bleeding profusely, with nothing to stop it, and you have no access to an ER. Now imagine that you apply a simple gel to your wound, and the bleeding ceases in mere seconds. A few minutes later you are fully healed.
That is the premise behind VetiGel, an algae-based polymer created by 17-year-old Joe Landolina inside his grandfather's lab, according to AskMen.
Fast forward five years and now Landolina is the CEO of Suneris, a biotech company has taken that concept and has turned it into a safe, efficient and extremely effective way to heal wounds.
The science behind this extraordinary gel is surprisingly simple.
Each batch of gel begins as algae, made up of tiny individual polymers. When broken down into smaller pieces, "kind of like Lego blocks," Landolina said, you can put them into the gel and then inject into a wound.
Upon hitting damaged tissue, the gel will instantly form a mesh-like structure.
"What that means, on the one hand, is that the gel will make a very strong adhesive that holds the wound together, but on the other hand, that mesh acts as a scaffold to help the body produce fibrin at the wound's surface," Landolina said.
Fibrin helps repair tissue over long-term periods of time, and it is what allows the VetiGel to be so effective.
For now, VetiGel will be distributed to veterinarian offices, but it soon will be ready for human use once it receives FDA approval.
The creation of this gel means that Band-Aids and stitches might soon be a thing of the past.
