Bioinspiration used to create nanotech shoelaces that cells ‘untie’ to activate healing proteins

What is it about?

Dynamic biomaterials have the potential to interact with damaged tissues over time to promote healing. However, there is a lack of methods to encode materials with dynamic biological information that turns on following direct interaction with cells of interest, rather than via external stimuli such as light. Here, DNA nanotechnology is used to create bioinspired molecules (TrAPs) that activate proteins important for healing when cells pull on the nanostructures. Uniquely, these nanostructures can be made to be selective to different types of cells, enabling new possibilities for activating specific therapeutics by specific cells of interest to guide the process of healing.

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Why is it important?

The TrAP technology provides a flexible method to create materials that actively communicate with wounds and provide key instructions when and where they are needed. This sort of intelligent, dynamic healing is useful during every phase of the healing process, has the potential to increase the body’s chance to recover, and has far-reaching uses on many different types of wounds. This technology has the potential to serve as a conductor of wound repair, orchestrating different cells over time to work together to heal damaged tissues.