Effective protection of biological tissues from severe blunt force injury by engineered nanoscale liquid flow

Abstract

Blunt force trauma (BFT), the injury of the body by forceful impacts such as falls, motor vehicle crashes and collisions, causes damage to bio-organs that can lead to life-threatening situations. To address the unmet need of bioprotection materials for BFT, we developed a novel, liquid nanofoam (LN)-based system. The LN system employs a unique mechanism of energy absorption, i.e. the external force-aided, nanoscale liquid flow. Under mechanical loading, the LN system effectively protected human cells from force-induced deformation and cell death. In addition to effective mitigation of the upregulation of stress and inflammatory genes, LN prevented blunt-force-induced damage of multiple vital organs including liver, kidney, heart, and lungs. To our knowledge, this is the first material of its kind that is biocompatible and capable of effectively protecting biotissues from BFT on molecular, cellular and tissue levels.