A natural biological adhesive from snail mucus for wound repair

The discovery of natural adhesion phenomena and mechanisms has advanced the development of a new generation of tissue adhesives in recent decades. In this study, we develop a natural biological adhesive from snail mucus gel, which consists a network of positively charged protein and polyanionic glycosaminoglycan. The malleable bulk adhesive matrix can adhere to wet tissue through multiple interactions. The biomaterial exhibits excellent haemostatic activity, biocompatibility and biodegradability, and it is effective in accelerating the healing of full-thickness skin wounds in both normal and diabetic male rats. Further mechanistic study shows it effectively promotes the polarization of macrophages towards the anti-inflammatory phenotype, alleviates inflammation in chronic wounds, and significantly improves epithelial regeneration and angiogenesis. Its abundant heparin-like glycosaminoglycan component is the main active ingredient. These findings provide theoretical and material insights into bio-inspired tissue adhesives and bioengineered scaffold designs.


March 2021
For manuscripts utilizing custom algorithms or software that are central to the research but not yet described in published literature, software must be made available to editors and reviewers. We strongly encourage code deposition in a community repository (e.g. GitHub). See the Nature Portfolio guidelines for submitting code & software for further information.

Data
Policy information about availability of data All manuscripts must include a data availability statement. This statement should provide the following information, where applicable: -Accession codes, unique identifiers, or web links for publicly available datasets -A description of any restrictions on data availability -For clinical datasets or third party data, please ensure that the statement adheres to our policy

Human research participants
Policy information about studies involving human research participants and Sex and Gender in Research.

Reporting on sex and gender
Population characteristics

Recruitment
Ethics oversight Note that full information on the approval of the study protocol must also be provided in the manuscript.

Field-specific reporting
Please select the one below that is the best fit for your research. If you are not sure, read the appropriate sections before making your selection.

Life sciences Behavioural & social sciences Ecological, evolutionary & environmental sciences
For a reference copy of the document with all sections, see nature.com/documents/nr-reporting-summary-flat.pdf

Life sciences study design
All studies must disclose on these points even when the disclosure is negative.

Sample size
Data exclusions

Replication
The kinetic curve of interactions between the s-GAG or heparin and cytokines was fitted by using the Biacore S200 Evaluation Software. Differentially expressed genes was analyzed using the edgeR software, Heatmaps were generated by the TBtools software (https:// github.com/CJ-Chen/TBtools/releases), GO terms and KEGG pathways were identified using KOBAS 2. All data needed to support the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Information. Data underlying Figures 1-9 and Supplementary Figures 1-17  No data were excluded from analyses.
Reproducibility was ensured by sampling from multiple biological replicates, i.e., from multiple rats or from multiple samples. The exact number of replicates in groups or independent biological experiments is mentioned in the figure legends. No results are included that were not observed in multiple experiments. We confirm that all attempts at replication were successful.
Reporting for specific materials, systems and methods We require information from authors about some types of materials, experimental systems and methods used in many studies. Here, indicate whether each material, system or method listed is relevant to your study. If you are not sure if a list item applies to your research, read the appropriate section before selecting a response. Male SD rats with similar weight used for normal wound model were randomly allocated into experimental groups. For STZ-induced diabetic rat model, after one week, those with blood sugar lower than 16.7 mM were not included in the experiment, and the qualified diabetic rats were weighed and randomly allocated.
Investigators were not blinded to group allocation, because different treatments (such as suture, cyanoarcylate adhesive and hydrogel dressing) in the skin wound can be easily observed even the investigators were blinded to group allocation. Except these special experiments, the investigators were blinded during data collection and/or analysis.