Hemostatic from snake venom
Hydrogel based on snake venom will stop massive bleeding
Sergey Vasiliev, Naked Science
Up to 40 percent of deaths after injuries are associated with blood loss, and in combat zones — even more. Bleeding is especially dangerous for those suffering from hemophilia and patients taking anticoagulants. A unique hemostatic agent, which Australian scientists have created on the basis of snake venom, will be able to help such people and save many lives. They write about this in an article published in the journal Advanced Health Care Materials (Yegappan et al., Snake Venom Hydrogels as a Rapid Hemostatic Agent for Uncontrolled Bleeding).
Snake venoms are complex cocktails of peptides, tools developed over millions of years of evolution for a quick chemical attack on the victim. They are extremely diverse in both properties and mechanism of action, but most toxins affect either the transmission of signals from the nervous system to the muscles, or affect the blood, causing its almost instant clotting, which leads to vascular blockage, necrosis and death. It was to such compounds that Amanda Kijas and her colleagues from the University of Queensland turned to create a hemostatic hydrogel.
The composition of the new product includes ecarin (ecarin) — a peptide that is isolated from the venom of the sandy eph. It has proteolytic activity, converting prothrombin into thrombin, which triggers rapid blood clotting and is already used in medicine to diagnose disorders of this stage of clotting.
Next, thrombin triggers the transition of fibrinogen to fibrin, which forms dense insoluble clots — blood clots. To stabilize blood clots, scientists used another "snake" peptide — textilinin (textilinin). It is secreted from the venom of Australian asps Pseudonaja textilis is still only being tested for use in medicine. Textilinin suppresses the work of plasmins — blood proteins that are responsible for the destruction of fibrin clots.
"Nature has already created very elegant and complex mechanisms, and we can redirect them to save people who can die from uncontrolled bleeding," says Amanda Kijas. "Our experiments show that when using snake venoms, blood clots form three times faster and are destroyed five times slower than when the body's natural systems work."
A promising preparation is made in the form of a hydrogel. Its structure remains liquid at room temperature, but it hardens when applied to the wound. This allows you to use the product without additional gauze and bandages, speeding up the application and increasing the chances of salvation in a situation of mass bleeding, when — without exaggeration — every second is precious.
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