Currently, digestive endoscopy is the most effective tool for diagnosis and treatment of gastrointestinal diseases. However, the incidence of complications after endoscopic treatment is relatively high, which seriously affects postoperative recovery of patients. For patients with severe complications, emergency treatment, such as surgery, may be required, which even threaten the lives of patients. Therefore, designing novel biomaterials to simply and efficiently treat gastric bleeding and accelerate wound healing after endoscopic treatment is highly desired. However, it remains a huge challenging due to complex physical and chemical environment in the digestive tract.
Recently, Department of Gastroenterology, Surgical Dreamworks and Frontier Institute of Science and Technology of the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU) jointly published a research article entitled "Injectable Self-Healing Adhesive pH-Responsive Hydrogels Accelerate Gastric Hemostasis and Wound Healing" in Nano-Micro Letters to resolve this issue. Deputy Chief Physician Chu Dake from Department of Gastroenterology and Professor Guo Baolin from Frontier Institute of Science and Technology are the co-corresponding authors. He Jiahui, a doctoral student, and Zhang Ziqian, an attending physician from Department of Dermatology are the co-first authors of this article. In 2020, the impact factor (IF) of N ano-Micro Letters journal was 16.419, ranking in JCR and Q1 of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
This 3-year research was designed to discover scientific problems from clinical practice. Under the guidance of innovative spirit of Surgical Dreamworks and explicit guidance and tremendous support of ProfessorLv Yi, injectable self-healing adhesive hydrogels with multifunctional propertieswere developed after repeated validations and practice for the first time according to physiological characteristics, physical and chemical environment of the digestive tract. This material properly integrates the injectability of acidic pH-responsive adhesive in stomach, self-healing property of resisting shear strength of contraction and peristalsis of digestive tract, high adhesion of the "micro-cross-linker" and biological hemostatic performance of aminocaproic acid..In vitro and animal experiments have demonstrated that this new material can be endoscopic sprayed and act as sealant/adhesive/hemostat to rapidly stop bleeding. Moreover, it can also exert anti-inflammatory and pro-healing effects by regulating the formation of type I collagen, theexpression of α-SMA, the infiltration of lymphocytes and angiogenesis during wound healing.The findings in this study are expected to provide a novel procedure for prevention and treatment of complications in a large quantity of patients receiving endoscopic treatment, and offer a novel solution for the bottleneck issue of high reliance of endoscopic equipment and consumables on overseas manufacturers.
In recent years, Department of Gastroenterology has established close cooperation with Surgical Dreamworks, aiming to resolve key scientific obstacles in the diagnosis and treatment of digestive system diseases, conduct in-depth exchanges with multi-disciplines of materials, chemistry and physics, and jointly carry out research beneficial to the health of people and tackling the bottleneck problems by taking advantage of the platform of Surgical Dreamworks. This article is another landmark achievement between Department of Gastroenterology and Surgical Dreamworks in the diagnosis and treatment of digestive tract diseases. Preliminary research has received Chinese Medical Association Science and Technology Award for Young Scholars, the second prize of Outstanding Scientific Research Achievements in Central Universities of Ministry of Education and the second prize of Science and Technology Award of Shaanxi Province.
