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Rutgers collaboration gives combat soldiers a revolutionary liquid bandage
Rutgers biomaterials have been in the forefront of innovative solutions to medical problems, treating illness and injury. Now Rutgers scientists are increasingly finding themselves in a new role as a broker of collaborations involving academia, private industry, and the military.
Most recently, the Center for Military Biomaterials Research, part of the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials at Rutgers, brought together BioCure Inc., a medical device company in Norcross, Georgia, and the U.S. Army. The purpose of the collaboration was to conduct research that ultimately resulted in an innovative new product: the trademarked GelSpray Liquid Bandage, a spray-on dressing frontline combat soldiers can apply to their own wounds.
“We created the Center for Military Biomaterials Research as a special program to address urgent military medical care needs, and the success of BioCure’s GelSpray shows that the approach works,” said Rutgers Professor Joachim Kohn, director of the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials in New Brunswick. The center is a formal academic consortium of Rutgers, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and New Jersey Institute of Technology.
David Devore, associate research professor of chemistry and chemical biology and chief operating officer of the Center for Military Biomaterials Research, said that the liquid bandage was designed in consultation with the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research, while Rutgers provided technical guidance based on knowledge of military product specification requirements, regulatory issues, and polymer chemistry.
The GelSpray dressing, recently cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is the first in a series of new sprayable wound care products that will advance the management and care of combat casualty and civilian wounds. Much like epoxy is dispensed in household kits, the dressing is applied with a dual syringe that releases two polymer ingredients. These polymers react rapidly upon mixing to form a gel-based dressing that conforms to the wound geometry, adheres to intact skin but not directly to the injured tissue, and resists abrasion.
While created for immediate military needs, the GelSpray technology is a platform that can accept a range of active ingredients to treat infection and pain, and control severe bleeding. Future versions of the liquid bandage may be suitable for use by civilian rescue teams to treat traumatic wounds and burns, as well as in the treatment of diabetic ulcers, ostomies, and postoperative wounds.
In the collaboration with BioCure, Rutgers’ Center for Military Biomaterials Research supported the research part of the product development effort with program coordination by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command and its Telemedicine and Advanced Technologies Research Center at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
Kohn said that Rutgers’ close collaboration with BioCure and the U.S. Army moved the project rapidly from concept to FDA market clearance. “The process took about three and a half years – a truly remarkable achievement,” Kohn added.