Sustainable surgical superglue

Researchers from Philip Messersmith’s group at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed recyclable adhesives made from a naturally occurring fatty acid that can be tailored for a wide variety of uses—from rigid resins to flexible surgical superglues ( Science 2024, DOI: 10.1126/science.ado6292 ) . “We don’t really know of any other adhesive system . . . that can traverse such a wide range of applications,” says Messersmith. Lipoic acid has attracted attention from researchers in recent years as a building block for stretchy, self-healing, biodegradable polymers. The disulfide bonds in the polymer backbone make it easy to break down back into the starting material—too easy, in fact. Lipoic acid polymers tend to spontaneously depolymerize when exposed to water, which limits their usefulness. Subhajit Pal, the postdoctoral fellow who did much of the hands-on work for the paper, devised a solution to keep that depolymerization under control. He added a