SPARK team’s therapeutic hydrogel prevents surgical adhesions
Posted on March 26th, 2025
A SPARK team led by Professor Michael Longaker has shown that a hydrogel containing a therapeutic small molecule prevents abdominal adhesions after surgery in mice and pigs, paving the way towards testing the therapeutic gel in clinical trials. The team published their results in Science Translational Medicine.
Postsurgical abdominal adhesions form after 50 to 90% of abdominal operations and can cause bowel obstruction, pain, and infertility. Dr. Longaker and colleague Dr. Deshka Foster have been studying scar formation and adhesions for years and previously identified the pathway responsible for adhesion formation and identified the transcription factor JUN that leads to adhesions. In a previous study, the team showed a repurposed small molecule JUN inhibitor, T-5224, decreased adhesion formation in mice.
Longaker and Foster and colleagues joined SPARK in 2021 to develop a therapeutic to prevent abdominal adhesion formation. The team further collaborated with the Eric Appel laboratory to develop a hydrogel formulation containing the therapeutic small molecule for application in the abdomen.
In the current study, the SPARK team encapsulated T-5224 in a sustained-release hydrogel that could be easily applied in an abdominal cavity at the end of a surgical procedure. In pig and mouse models of abdominal adhesion, the therapeutic gel reduced adhesion formation and severity without toxicity or impact on wound healing.
The team is focusing on the next steps to develop the therapeutic hydrogel for humans. Foster said, “We aim to continue to move forward towards commercialization and ultimately clinical trials, and our collaboration with the Appel lab is ongoing in this regard.”
Read more from Stanford Medicine here.
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