The best thing about a human life is how you can always make it better under one capacity or the other. Hence, we have naturally tried to do so time and time again throughout our history, with each attempt resulting in a unique experience for us. Nevertheless, if uniqueness is really the barometer here, no attempt can ever match up to the one that yielded technology. Technology’s emergence was a pivotal moment for the world, considering it brought an outright unprecedented skill-set into the picture. In case the stated fact alone wasn’t enough, the creation also managed to use those skills for impacting each and every area on our spectrum, including the highly-critical discipline of healthcare. Technology’s foray into healthcare came at a time when the sector was notably struggling to hold its own against an obsolete structure. Fortunately, by putting forth new and smarter ideas, the creation was successful in shaking up that reality. In fact, even after conceiving a wholly different healthcare outlook, the famous medtech concept will continue finding new inroads to help the sphere in optimizing all the potential at its disposal. This dynamic was reinforced yet again on the back of a recent development.
The researching team at MIT has successfully developed carbon monoxide-loaded foam, which is designed to provide relief from various inflammatory diseases. According to certain reports, the therapeutic foam can either be eaten or it can be delivered rectally. It’s an intriguing concept, as taking carbon monoxide in high doses is actually well known for causing healthcare complications, even leading to death on a few occasions. Nevertheless, when used in a limited amount, the gas can notably go on to have anti-inflammatory effects. The latter element will encourage the researchers to embark upon a journey where they’ll reimagine the gas into this edible foam that is often found on the menu of various high-end restaurants. So far, they have tested the technology on rodents, and if we put our stock in the available details, they did observe an optimum level of therapeutic efficacy against multiple disease models.
“The ability to deliver a gas opens up whole new opportunities of how we think of therapeutics. We generally don’t think of a gas as a therapeutic that you would take orally (or that could be administered rectally), so this offers an exciting new way to think about how we can help patients,” said Giovanni Traverso, one of the creators of the new hybrid material.
Talk about how the researchers turned the idea into an edible foam, they used ingredients like methyl cellulose, alginate, and maltodextrin. Next up, they refined the foam’s release properties by altering the amount of Xantham gum, which also acted as a stabilizer. Later, the researchers finished the job off by using a specialized siphon to add CO gas to the foam.
