New Worlds: Cow blood, nanotechnology combine to make sutures

Researchers have tried for years to develop wound-repair materials from natural proteins.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
blood 88 (photo credit: )
blood 88
(photo credit: )
A key natural protein derived from cow's blood has been turned by scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology into strong nanosized fibers about 1/50,000th of the width of a human hair. The advance, according to a report published in Biomacromolecules, the journal of the American Chemical Society, could lead to a new generation of stronger, longer-lasting biocompatible sutures and bandages. Dr. Eyal Zussman and colleagues at the Technion's faculty of mechanical engineering and Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute in Haifa note that researchers have tried for years to develop wound-repair materials from natural proteins, hoping that such fibers would be more compatible with body tissue than existing materials. Scientists recently focused on producing these fibers through "electrospinning" - a hi-tech weaving process that uses electrical charges to draw nanosized fibers from a liquid. But the approach has achieved poor results until now. In the new study, the scientists describe a method for producing electrospun polymers using bovine serum albumin (BSA), a so-called "globular" protein found in cow's blood. BSA is similar to serum albumin, one of the most abundant proteins in the human body. The method involves adding certain chemicals to a BSA solution to loosen the bonds that usually hold these highly folded proteins together. This results in a thinner, more spinnable protein solution. Using electrospinning, the process resulted in strong fibers that are easily spun into suture-like threads or thick mats resembling conventional wound dressings. This approach is being followed by the groups of Tel Aviv University clinical biochemist Dr. Zvi Nevo and physics Prof. Abraham Katzir, the researchers said, noting that the new method can also be applied to other types of natural proteins. FALLING INTO A PATTERN A novel algorithm for real-time, automatic, generic and robust pattern matching has been developed at the Hebrew University. Yissum, the university's technology transfer company, recently introduced the algorithm, developed by Prof. Michael Werman and Ofir Pele, both from the School of Computer Science and Engineering. The algorithm enables rapid recognition of a particular pattern in a fraction of the time currently available. It can be applied in computer vision software for managing images, in robotics as a simple and fast method for vision-based systems in assembly manufacturing and inspection, as well as for face recognition and other security applications. The findings were published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. "This novel method enables ultra-rapid pattern recognition which is highly robust and reliable," says Yissum CEO Nava Swersky Sofer. "The algorithm can enhance various imaging and computer vision applications that are becoming an ever-growing part of everyday life. For example, it can be helpful in quick information retrieval from large visual databases. One such application can be photographing a restaurant and immediately accessing relevant reviews. In the field of security, the algorithm can be used, among others, for surveillance purposes by finding a suspected person in a video." Many applications in image processing and computer vision require finding a particular pattern in an image - a process termed pattern matching. Pattern matching is typically performed by scanning an entire image and evaluating a distance measure between the sought pattern and areas - or windows - in the image. The researchers say the novel algorithm is much faster than current methods because it doesn't try to estimate the distances for non-similar windows but only decides that these windows are non-similar. The reduction in running time is due to the fact that unnecessary information is not computed. The method is applicable to any pattern shape, even a non-contiguous one, and is automatic and robust, enabling detection of low-quality patterns, rotated patterns or patterns that are partly occluded. NO-FALL MOTORCYCLE A Technion civil engineering student has built a two-wheeled motorcycle that can't fall. The vehicle is controlled by a computer, sensors and a gyroscope based on the motorcycle's movements. Uri Nenner worked under the supervision of Dr. Rafi Linker and Prof. Per-Olof Gutman. The apparatus carries out "countersteering" that automatically moves the wheel to an opposite direction to prevent the vehicle from falling. To try out the system, the team used a 50 cc motorbike that they found abandoned on campus. Nenner cut it into two pieces, with the engine and rear wheel included in the back part. He weighed and measured both parts to find the center of mass; student Anton Zak built a computerized model. Then a computer was fed movement equations to produce a dynamic model for the motorbike and a robotic control algorithm. The reconstructed motorbike "refused" to fall even when it drove by itself and was pushed from the sides. Nenner earned his degree with his invention, which cost him only NIS 12,000 to produce in less than two years. He says a platform to investigate motorcycle accidents without putting the investigator at risk may result from his work. If commercially practical, it could also lead to emergency systems on motorcycles to prevent them from injuring riders.