By Abubakar Tolani
Unlike most people, when they hear or think about pythons, it been visualized as a huge snake squeezing and swallowing humans alive. But little did they know that pythons initially hold onto their prey with their sharp, backward-curving teeth? Researchers in the medical field have been aware long time ago that these animal’s teeth are perfectly made for grasping soft tissue rather than cutting through it, but no one is yet to put this concept into surgical practice. As the year goes by, discussions concerning these teeth has been frequent in the lab of Dr. Stavros Thomopoulos, a professor of orthopedics and biomedical engineering at Columbia University . The development and regeneration of the tendon-to-bone attachment was being focused by a leading researcher, Thomopoulos, who is particularly interested in advancing tendon-to-bone repair, necessary for rotator cuff repair and anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction.
Among the most occurring tendon injuries, rotator cuff tears shows to affect more than 17 million people in the United States each year.
The incidence of injury increases with age: more than 40% of the population are over 65 years old experience a rotator cuff tear.
Because rotator cuff tears typically occurs at the tendon-to-bone insertion site, rotator cuff repair is aimed at anatomically restoring the tendon attachment.
However, successfully reattaching tendon to bone remains a substantial difficulty in the field of medicine.
The team’s original idea was to copy the shape of python teeth, but they went much further, using simulations, 3D printing, and ex vivo experiments on cadavers to explore the relationship between tooth shape and grasping vs. cutting mechanics. The end result was a biomimetic device, made of a biocompatible resin — an array of teeth atop a curved base — capable of grasping, not cutting, tendon.