Abstract
Hemorrhage from internal organs remains a critical challenge in both trauma care and surgical procedures, as existing hemostatic adjuncts frequently fail to provide consistent and effective bleeding control, particularly under conditions of active bleeding or impaired coagulation. Here, we develop and evaluate a Hemostatic Tough Adhesive (HTA) in controlled preclinical models of traumatic solid organ injury and compare its performance against leading commercially available hemostatic agents. The HTA consistently outperformed its counterparts, achieving 100% hemostasis in both liver and spleen injuries within an in vivo preclinical porcine model. In contrast, existing adjuncts exhibited variable and often incomplete efficacy. Beyond immediate hemostasis, the HTA demonstrated prolonged stability and biocompatibility during the postoperative wound healing phase. Notably, the HTA exhibited tissue surface adhesion energy several orders of magnitude greater than that of current hemostatic products, indicating its potential utility for surgical and trauma-related bleeding management.
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The data generated in this study are provided in the manuscript, Supplementary Information, and Source Data files. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
The custom MATLAB code for mechanical testing is available in Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/records/18827563).
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard (DJM) and the National Institute on Aging of the NIH (K99/R00AG065495) (BRF). We thank Des White for assistance in the peristaltic pump setup. We thank Katarina Richter and Emmanuel Osorno for support in illustrations.
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D.O.K., P.S.K., K.C.W., D.J.M., and B.R.F. conceived the study and designed the experiments. D.O.K., P.S.K., K.C.W., H.I., F.O.O., and B.R.F. performed the experiments and collected data. D.O.K., P.S.K., K.C.W., F.O.O., B.P., A.N., and B.R.F. contributed to animal procedures and data acquisition. M.T. performed histological analysis. D.O.K., K.C.W., F.M., and J.C. provided clinical input and assisted with study design and interpretation. P.S.K. and B.R.F. analyzed the data. D.O.K., P.S.K., K.C.W., and B.R.F. wrote the manuscript. D.J.M. and B.R.F. supervised the project. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.
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B.R.F. has the following interests: Amend Surgical, licensed IP; Limax Biosciences, equity. D.J.M. has the following interests: Lyell, equity; Attivare, equity; IVIVA Medical, consulting and equity; J&J, consulting; Boston Scientific, consulting; Limax Biosciences, equity; Epoulosis, equity; Revela, equity; Amend Surgical and Sirenex, licensed IP. P.K. has the following interests: Limax Biosciences, equity. H.I. has the following interests: Limax Biosciences, equity. All other authors declare no competing interests.
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Kent, D.O., Kwon, P.S., Wu, K.C. et al. Hemostatic Tough Adhesives seal tissue and control hemorrhage. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71235-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71235-z
