This plant-based gel can stop bleeding in seconds

Global Business

A small bio-tech company in the New York City borough of Brooklyn has come up with a plant-based gel that can stop bleeding instantly and is dubbed by some as the band-aid of the future.
CCTV’s Shraysi Tandon has more from New York.

This plant-based gel can stop bleeding in seconds

A small bio-tech company called Suneris located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn wants to improve the bandage industry with a plant-based gel they've named Vetigel. Some have dubbed the product the band-aid of the future. It is, at the time of this posting, only approved for use on animals by veterenarians. Suneris hopes it will be approved by the FDA for human use.

Biotech company Suneris invented a product called Vetigel which is a gel that they say can stop bleeding in a number of wounds from minor lesions to massive arterial bleeding in about 10 seconds. According to the Suneris website, the company says the gel product is designed exclusively for veterinarian use on animals, but the company says it hopes to get FDA approval for use on humans after more testing. Joe Landolina, the company’s CEO, came up with the idea. He’s only 22 years old.

“The gel can be used on anything from neural tissue to tissue within the eye, to the liver, to the spleen to kidneys to just lacerations on the skin. So it’s really diverse,” Landolina said.

Vetigel is made up of plant-based polymers that hold and imitate the structure of the skin or organ on which it’s placed.

The gel has strong adhesive properties, enabling it to stick to the wound and begin healing. The company also has another solution, that when applied to the gel, will removed the substance without having to scrape it off.

Suneris’ chief scientist says the gel can also be used in a non-sterile environment. The company, if approved for use in humans by the FDA, hopes it could be used in emergency situations and by the military in combat zones.

“The morphological properties, meaning the actual physical properties and the shape of the polymer, demonstrate an anti-microbial affect. So we not only prevent the potential for infection increasing on the wound site, but we actually combat the existing infection that may have already begun prior to the application of the product,” said Omar Ahmad, vice president for engineering at Suneris.

Over the next month, 3,000 veterinarians across the U-S are going to be testing Vetigel on the animals they treat. The company’s website is soliciting veterinarians to use their product and aid in the research.

There are currently products on the market that stop bleeding in this fashion such as QuickClot gauze, used by the U.S Army. The main ingredient in QuickClot is kaolin, also known as China clay and named after a hill in China in which the clay was mined for centuries. The noticeable advantage of Vetigel would be that it’s plant based and so is easier to produce and can also be stored at room temperature.

If the FDA approves this gel for use in humans, Landolina hopes to get a U.S. Department of Defense grant to turn this gel into a product that the U.S. military will buy.