Self-healing, Artificial Muscle Material

<Movie Guy Voice> In the winter of December 2016, a group of scientists created a new material, inspired by the comic book character Wolverine. They created a transparent, elastic ,self-healing material that could be electrically activated.

I don't know about you, but that gets my applied science neurons totally fired up :) . Any one of those adjectives alone are awesome, but all of them? This is is totally exciting.

Fire up your old chemistry vocabulary--here are some details. Previous self-healing materials used non-covalent (weaker) bonds, which allowed breakage and rejoining, but these bonds weren't stable when they needed to be, specifically within electrochemical environments (and I'm reaching here, but this should be correct--electrochemical environments, as within the human body).

Researcher Chao Wang "helped solve that problem by using a mechanism called ion-dipole interactions, which are forces between charged ions and polar molecules that are highly stabile under electrochemical conditions. He combined a polar, stretchable polymer with a mobile, high-ionic-strength salt to create the material with the properties the researchers were seeking."

Initial applications can certainly go into the home furnishings and appliance category (remember those leather and vinyl repair commercials from the 70's?), but my primary interests are in the medical domain. More R&D is needed on this, and especially around the topic of body acceptance and biofilm prevention..but who knows, if the material can carry a current, perhaps it can also safely zap bacterial colonies without frying surrounding tissue?

Muscle damage/replacement applications

Prosthetics: This is obvious, but it deserves mentioning. Some of the new prosthetics provide comparable capabilities to the human body, but it is likely that some portion of these patients would appreciate a more human form factor, and to regain a more refined sense of control and range of motion. What if we could attach specific muscle groups around the prosthetic limb, innervate the materials, and provide muscle attachments to original portions of the skeleton, where relevant, and use the material to permit fascial groupings? What if we could improve the human rotator cuff design, which is so prone to damage to the muscles and cartilage?

Short Term Repair: As a total sci-fi idea, what if we could provide short-term muscle support to athletes or soldiers, in the case of a Class 2 or 3 muscle tear? If you've ever had a groin pull, you know it is no laughing matter. Retention of some level of muscle function could help ensure the patient and the patient's neural body mapping remains engaged through the therapy experience.

Large Scale Muscle Supplementation: Certainly, there are those who would want bodybuilding without the work, but my interests are more humanitarian. In my orthopedic and bodywork books, I've seen cases of individuals born without certain muscle groups, such as the pectoral muscles, and there are certainly surgical cases where a muscle may have been damaged beyond repair, as in war or other accidents, say if the rectus femoris ripped off the patellar tendon and suffered significant damage to the muscle body. Limited Muscle Supplementation: This one is a tad out of my realm of expertise, but what about cases where limited sections of a muscle have been irrevocably damaged, impacting full muscular function or effectiveness? What if we could also reconnect nerves through this material? I'm thinking of cases of gas gangrene, crush injuries, or limited amounts of necrosis, if it was caught early enough.

Also, there is the super-cutting edge stuff like eardrum replacement or specific ocular muscle replacement. Over the summer, I learned of a case in which a patient was subjected to 14 surgeries for amblyopia correction (and correction of subsequent migraines and diplopia). After so many surgeries, I shudder to think of the scarring and remaining function of his original muscles! At some point, he may have reached limits of what was left to cut. This idea could also be extended to patients with birth trauma.

Sources:

UCR Today. A Wolverine Inspired Material - by Sean Nealon. December 23, 2016. Retrieved from: https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/43181

UCR Today: Self-healing Polymer Could Lead to Artificial Muscle - by Sean Nealon. April 18, 2016. Retrieved from: https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/36591

#MedicalDevices #OccupationalTherapy #PhysicalTherapy #EyeMovement #Neuroscience #Rehabilitation #ArtificialMuscle