NEXT GENERATION LEADERS
Healing Touch
Maria Pereira may have solved one of
surgery’s oldest problems
Naina Bajekal
Wherever Maria Pereira goes
these days—her office in Paris, a conference in Boston, or back home to Portugal—she carries around a thumb-size vial of glue.
That vial, a good-luck charm, may contain the solution to one of surgery’s
oldest problems: how to seal wounds and holes in the body without damaging the
body itself.
The ancient Egyptians and
Greeks faced the same dilemma, and coarse stitches from catgut and silk were
their method of choice. The modern physician relies on a more refined technique
of suturing wounds, yet it can still result in infection, irritation and
scarring. Pereira, the head of research at Paris-based medical-device startup
Gecko Biomedical, plans on changing that. “Innovation in science is the key to
improving people’s lives,” says the 30-year-old, who grew up in the Portuguese
city of Leiria and moved to Paris in October 2013 to join Gecko. The company
closed its first round of funding at the end of that year, raising $11 million
to advance work on surgical glues and patches for wound closure.
Pereira’s journey began more
than seven years ago, after she was awarded a scholarship from the MIT-Portugal
Program to pursue a Ph.D. in bioengineering in Boston. “From day one, Maria was
all in on all levels,” says Jeff Karp, her former research supervisor. “Because
of her passion for learning and for making the world a better place, she really
exhibited the steepest learning and growth curve of anyone I’ve ever seen.”
When Karp was approached by
Boston Children’s Hospital in 2009 to come up with an alternative to sutures
for addressing congenital heart defects, Pereira was the obvious choice to lead
the research. There was a desperate need for a better solution: nearly 1 in
every 100 babies is born with a congenital heart defect, and it’s a leading
cause of infant deaths in the U.S. A child’s heart, merely the size of its own
fist, is so fragile that suturing tissue can create additional tears; as the
heart grows, more revision procedures are required, causing further damage.
Pereira’s goal was to develop
a glue that could stick in the body’s harshest environment: the heart, which
pumps what she describes as “a hurricane of blood” 60 times a minute. An
adhesive that could attach under such wet and dynamic conditions must be
elastic enough to expand and contract with each beat of the heart, and be
hydrophobic (to repel blood away from the surface), biodegradable and nontoxic.
In 2012, Pereira designed a material that met all those criteria and more: her
glue adheres into place only when the surgeon shines a light on it, giving them
control of the delivery process.
The material was so promising
that Karp, together with established scientists and entrepreneurs, co-founded
Gecko Biomedical in Paris and appointed Pereira to progress that medical
technology from the lab into clinics. Within a year, her team managed to produce
industrial quantities of the glue, up from just five grams in the lab. “Maria
doesn’t just get things done, she makes things happen,” says Christophe Bancel,
Gecko’s CEO.
With clinical trials due to
start at the end of this year, the material could reach operating theaters as
early as 2017. Pereira’s dream is to completely revolutionize modern surgery.
So far, she hasn’t skipped a beat.
Naina Bajekal,
Paris, TIME, 5-10-2015
Photographs: Adam Ferguson/TIME
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário
Não publicamos comentários de anônimos/desconhecidos.
Por favor, se optar por "Anônimo", escreva o seu nome no final do comentário.
Não use CAIXA ALTA, (Não grite!), isto é, não escreva tudo em maiúsculas, escreva normalmente. Obrigado pela sua participação!
Volte sempre!
Abraços./-