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.
This is the premise of VetiGel, an algae-based polymer created by Joe Landolina — a 22 year-old who invented the product when he was just 17.
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 that makes this all possible is surprisingly basic.
Each batch of gel begins as algae, which is made up of tiny individual polymers. If you break those polymers down into even tinier pieces, "kind of like Lego blocks," Landolina says, you can put them into the gel and inject that gel into a wound site.
Once it hits the damaged tissue, whether it's open skin or a biopsied soft organ — livers, kidneys, spleens — the gel instantly forms a mesh-like structure.
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.
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