Australian scientists are confident a goo-like substance that was instrumental in the creation of life on Earth also holds significant medical benefits.
The molecules of the primordial goo, known as prebiotic compounds, date back billions of years.
The brown material was famously discovered when scientist Stanley Miller added an electric spark to gases in an experiment aimed at recreating the primordial conditions which gave rise to life on Earth.
But no-one realised its possible medical applications until more than 50 years later, when scientists had a ‘what if’ chat in a nondescript corridor at the CSIRO.
They figured if the goo was integral to the formation of life, perhaps it could have other practical uses.
They set about trying to chemically recreate it in a simple and effective way, and testing what medical purposes it had.
Now they have developed an innovative way to use the goo to coat medical implants like catheters and pacemakers.
Hundreds of thousands of Australians receive medical implants every year, and the coating helps the human body accept them quickly.
“All the people working over the last 50 or 60 years in this field of prebiotic chemistry had not thought about this before,” said Helmut Thissen, a senior researcher with the CSIRO.
“This discovery really is something that is exciting for us because it takes this entire field of prebiotic chemistry and all the developments in that field to an application, and in our particular case, to a biomedical application.”
Results from the studies have far exceeded the researchers’ expectations.
“We’ve been able to grow a particular cell type called myofibroblast. (The molecules) like it a lot. Now we are starting to conduct cell-culturing experiments with stem cells, and they like to colonise it and grow on it as well,” Dr Evans said.
”What has been surprising about it is that pretty much everything we’ve tried with it has worked quite well. We are also very hopeful because of the ability for it to cultivate these different types of cell lines that will actually be generic across any particular cell line.
“And so therefore when it comes to implants we want to have something well integrated into the body.
“It will basically disguise an implant; the body will like to encapsulate it, and integrate it quite nicely.”
While the goo can be recreated in the lab, on a mass scale and at a relatively low cost, many more years of studies will be needed to find out if it can move from the lab to the hospital.
However, scientists said they expected the discovery to open the door to countless opportunities in the medical field.