Repairing a severed nerve has long meant stitching it back together with painstakingly tiny sutures, but the French firm Tissium thinks there is a cleaner way. The company has built a liquid biopolymer that bonds to tissue the moment it is exposed to light, holding the two cut ends of a nerve in place like a splint while the tissue knits itself back together. Made from fatty acid and glycerol, both of which the body produces naturally, the material biodegrades once healing is complete, leaving the nerves intact.
Why a cut nerve is so hard to fix
Peripheral nerves form the vast network that branches out from the brain and spinal cord to reach the rest of the body. They are often severed in injuries involving knives or machinery, and when that happens the two ends must be held steady while the nerve slowly repairs itself. If they are not, the result can range from tingling and complete numbness to sharp, electrical-like stabbing pain.
Lining up severed nerves currently relies on micro-sutures, which Tissium cofounder and deputy chief executive officer Maria Pereira calls "a very delicate technique." She says, "so we are trying to provide a new way and a better way for peripheral nerves to be prepared in a consistent manner, a less traumatic matter, and with better patient outcomes."
What the finger-nerve trial showed
The company ran a trial with 12 patients in the US who had injured nerves in their fingers. All 12 regained the ability to feel temperature, pain, texture, and light touch in their fingers, compared with a little over 80 percent using other techniques. A year later, none reported pain or device-related complications. Surgeons in the US can already buy the treatment.
"While further evidence is needed, it's exciting to see more advanced biomaterials and regenerative medical techniques at the disposal of the modern surgeon," says Simran Chana, a surgeon, materials scientist, and director of the Frontier Technologies Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Chana is not involved with Tissium's work.
Fresh funding and what comes next
To expand commercialization, Tissium has raised €30 million in private investments from venture capital firms and family offices, along with €30 million in debt financing from the European Investment Bank, the European Union's lending arm. The product, which received FDA marketing approval last year, will continue to be manufactured in northern France.
The money will also push the technology into new uses. Tissium expects to enroll around 200 patients in a US trial aimed at helping the body heal after hernia treatment. To fix a hernia, surgeons push the bulging organ or tissue back through the muscle wall and reinforce the area with stitches and mesh. Pereira, who is also the company's chief innovation officer, notes that there can be some inconsistency in how the sutures are performed, which can affect outcomes. Tissium's treatment, she says, can deliver that consistency and in turn improve recovery.
As she finalizes the results of a European study that tested the treatment on 78 patients undergoing hernia repair, Pereira says surgeons were able to apply Tissium's goo 100 percent of the time. Patients showed signs of improved quality of life in terms of pain, recovery, and activities, along with a lower recurrence rate of hernias.
An eye on heart surgery
Tissium is also developing products for cardiovascular reconstruction, the very application Pereira first imagined while earning a PhD in bioengineering nearly 20 years ago. The company is now preparing to launch a randomized pivotal trial in the US for its cardiovascular product, which the new funding will support.
