A Novel High-strength Autologous Fibrin Glue Augmented with Biocompatible Polymers

Commercially available fibrin glues are expensive and may cause undesired immune responses in patients. Several alternatives to this have been proposed, however, those lack behind in terms of adhesion strength, biocompatibility, and cost-effectiveness. Here, a low-cost, autologous fibrin glue augmented with biopolymer has been developed. Fibrin glue of different compositions were developed and characterized in terms of clotting time, adhesive strength, cytotoxicity, and elemental compositions. Fibrin glue was developed using 5%, 10%, and 20% (w/v) calcium chloride, where 10% was found to be optimum based on clotting time. The average time for clot formation ranged between 3 to 5 minutes and elevated temperature greatly accelerated the clotting. Sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and methylcellulose (MC) polymers were added to the fibrin glue at concentrations varying from 0.31% to 1.25%. CMC showed a maximum adhesion strength of 80.9 g/cm(2) at 0.63% concentration and MC showed 106.3 g/cm(2) at 1.25% concentration. Cytotoxicity analysis (IC50) revealed that the polymers at a concentration greater than 1.25% showed decreased cell viability (<70%). This biopolymer-aided autologous fibrin glue has a very good prospect as it exhibits better performance than commercial glues and is free from the drawbacks reported for the latter ones.