Latest news with #ChangxuSun
CBS News
21-03-2025
- Health
- CBS News
Waste from nut used in herbal teas can be made into hydrogel with many medical uses, UChicago scientists find
A gelatinous substance that would otherwise be waste from a nut often used to make herbal tea can be made into a hydrogel with all different biomedical uses, University of Chicago researchers recently discovered. In research published last month, UChicago scientists created a hydrogel out of husks from the malva nut. In traditional Chinese medicine, the malva nut, or Pang Da Hai (胖大海) belongs to the "cool herbs that transform phlegm and stop cough" category of medicinal flora, according to Me & Qi. The tea made from malva nuts is used as a remedy for a sore throat, much like ginger or lemon tea might be, UChicago researchers said. A small dried nut is placed in hot water, and a tea with a sweet and smooth quality results. But the U of C researchers were not looking at the nuts themselves, but the gelatinous substance husks — which swell into a gelatinous substance that would typically be thrown away after making the tea. "Originally, it's an oval shape one centimeter in width. Once you soak it in the water, it will expand about eight times in volume and 20 times by weight, turning into a gelatinous mass, like a jelly," Changxu Sun, a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Engineering, said in a news release. "After you drink the beverage, you're left the jelly as a waste. People usually throw that out." But Sun and UChicago Chemistry Professor Bozhi Tian realized the substance was a natural hydrogel — a viscous, water-based substance that has a variety of health care uses. The U of C noted that hydrogels are used in wound care — and are more effective at fighting infection and promoting healing beyond a mere bandage. They are also used in drug delivery systems, pacemakers and other implanted bioelectronics, tissue repair, and ECG and EKG readings, the university said. However, turning malva nuts into a natural hydrogel didn't just involve making some tea and then scooping out the gel that would otherwise have been tossed. Researchers put the malva nuts in a blender and pulverized them first, then ran them through a centrifuge to separate out the soft hydrocolloid substance from the organic polymers, or lingins, from which their shells are made, the U of C said. The researchers freeze-dried the hydrocolloid solution, resulting in a dehydrated "pure malva nut polysaccharide," the U of C said. If that polysaccharide is rehydrated — UChicago compared the process to a dry sponge regaining its shape under a faucet — a hydrogel results. Having produced the malva nut hydrogel, the UChicago researchers began to test it out for uses such as wound care and biomonitoring, the university said. "We found it demonstrated superior performance and qualities compared to commercial ECG patches," Sun said in the release, "and then we also applied to the tissue surface in vivo, demonstrating great recording of biosignals." Sun told the university he hopes the newly discovered hydrogel could be a useful and cheaper option for medical applications around the world — particularly low-income countries in Southeast Asia where the malva tree grows, the U of C said. The research was published "Sustainable Conversion of Husk into Viscoelastic Hydrogels for Value-Added Biomedical Applications," was published back on Feb. 17 in the journal Matter.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Malva nut residue could help heal wounds, improve medical devices, study shows
Feb. 17 (UPI) -- The humble malva nut, which for centuries has been used to make herbal tea in Southeast Asian countries, could have a much more important future as a sustainable source for medical applications, U.S. researchers say. The nut, known as Pangdahai or PDH, has a unique ability to expand tremendously when submerged in water. That property sparked an idea to tap it for use as a low-cost, natural and sustainable resource for medical devices that use hydrogels for such things as wound care, regenerative medicine and adhesives for skin-attached sensors and devices, according to scientists at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. In a study published Monday in the scientific journal Matter, a university Chemistry Department team led by doctoral candidate Changxu Sun and Professor Bozhi Tian demonstrated that the gooey residue left over from soaking PDH to make an herbal tea for soothing sore throats possesses previously unrealized abilities when processed into an all-natural hydrogel. The substance can also outperform commercially available gels in transmitting accurate signals while monitoring heartbeats for electrocardiograms via skin-attached patches, they determined. The findings could have broad implications in the search for sustainable alternatives in the design of many kinds of medical devices that use sticky hydrogels -- especially in the lower-income Southeast Asian countries where malva nut trees are common and locally produced medical resources are rare, Sun told UPI. "We wanted to see what the potential could be for a new kind of naturally derived hydrogel to benefit healthcare applications," he said. Hydrogels are widely used in wound care and medical monitoring due to their excellent mechanical properties, electrical conductivity and adhesion. And they have become a key element in one of the most promising emerging fields in the medical device industry -- flexible electronic products that connect living biological tissues to synthetic electronic systems, such as medical sensors and wearable devices. Many of the currently available synthetic hydrogels, however, are made from relatively costly and non-degradable materials and have been known to display poor biocompatibility, difficult degradation and weak skin adaptability. Thus, the search is on for low-cost, organic renewable natural polymers as alternatives, which is where the fruit of the malva tree comes in. The nut expands to eight times in volume and 20 times by weight when immersed in water, leaving a jelly that is thrown out. That waste material, however, looked and acted like potentially valuable hydrogel to Sun -- a hunch the University of Chicago researchers have now shown to be correct. "One application for this hydrogel is in regenerative medicine and wound healing," Sun said. "We found the material can actually promote cell migration and the generation of new cells." Another promising application is bio-signal monitoring, such as ECG patches, which are commonly used in everyday medicine. "With those devices, if you put the electrode directly onto the skin, you will expect some level of noise, and that requires the use of some interstitial material between the electrode and the skin," Sun said. "Usually synthetic polymers or hydrogels are used for this, but we thought, OK, can we instead use a simple, environmentally friendly material instead?" The answer turned out to be "yes," and in fact, Sun said the malva nut hydrogel produced an even better "signal-to-noise" ratio than current synthetic versions. An expert in the field not affiliated with the study, Chi Hwan Lee, a professor of biomedical and mechanical engineering at Purdue University, agreed it is "essential" that sustainable, plant-based materials be developed to supply the quickly expanding use of flexible electronics in biomedicine. "Traditional electronics rely on non-biodegradable materials that contribute to e-waste and biocompatibility issues, whereas plant-derived biopolymer hydrogels, like the PDH-based material in this study, offer an eco-friendly alternative with excellent flexibility and biocompatibility," he told UPI in an email. Large-scale production of such materials could be accomplished by optimizing them for existing microfabrication facilities, he added. While the development of natural hydrogels has made significant progress in recent years, other experts caution there are still some challenges and issues waiting to be addressed. One of them, according to a Chinese study published last year, is that to produce sufficiently high electrical conductivity and strong adhesion, natural materials generally still must be blended with synthetic materials, which reduces the biodegradability and biocompatibility of the resulting product. "It is crucial to develop hydrogels based on entirely natural polymeric materials, which are capable of exhibiting excellent properties without relying on other synthetic functional materials," the authors state. Other drawbacks include their "low performance rates" and high production costs, which makes them uncompetitive with commercial products in the new era of flexible electronics. All three of those concerns could be answered with the malva nut hydrogel, Sun said, noting it is 100% organic, performs as well or better than synthetic materials and is simple and inexpensive to produce. And it could especially be a boon to poorer Southeast Asian where the tree grows, such as Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. "They can strategically use the fruits of the tree to help them be self-reliant in their healthcare resources," he said. "In those countries, major cities may have adequate resources, but with villages and small towns, indigenous plants and trees could provide some solutions."
