Pour-on nanotechnology stops bleeding in seconds

10 October 2006

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, have created a liquid that stops bleeding in any tissue in a matter of seconds. It is a discovery that they claim has the potential to revolutionise surgery and emergency medicine and could even make it easier to reattach severed limbs.

Rutledge Ellis-Behnke and colleagues worked from the nanoscale, using individual amino acids to create a self-assembling peptide. It looks exactly like water but when applied directly onto injured tissue it halts bleeding. This is the first time nanotechnology has been used to control bleeding, claims Rutledge.

The remarkable discovery was made by accident during an experiment in which the liquid was used to stimulate nerve repair in the brains of rats. Ellis-Behnke’s group, whose work is focussed on central nervous system repair, found that the liquid mended the nerve cells as predicted, but caused a strange side effect.
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Worldwide Ranking of Nanotechnology Start Up Companies

2006 has been a banner year for nanotechnology partnerships, as small companies like A123Systems and NanoMaterials Technology tied up with corporate giants like Black & Decker and BASF. But nanotechnology’s technical challenges, contorted intellectual property landscape, and multi-step value chains make selecting a partner difficult. The good news: Corporate executives can rely on objective criteria to shortlist start-ups for partnership on an industry-specific basis, according to a new report from Lux Research entitled “Ranking Nanotech Start-ups for Partnership Value.” The ranking from this report, which evaluates all 136 venture capital-backed, independently-operating nanotech start-ups worldwide, will be exclusively released at the upcoming Lux Executive Summit conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 16-17.

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