Could a New Injectable Gel Save Lives on the Battlefield?
14th December 2014
Blood, as the vital and life-sustaining passageway through the body, has a strong incentive to flow as easily as possible — in all cases except that of injury. With a cut or larger bleeding injury, platelets rush to the opening, part of the body’s desperate action to cut off what had moments ago flowed so freely. That switch takes time, and as good as platelets are, in trauma situations or on the battlefield, they might not work fast enough unaided. Now, a team of scientists at Texas A&M, Harvard, and MIT just developed an injectable gel that uses synthetic nanoplatelets to staunch the bleeding.