BY JOSHUA BROWN
UVM COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
HEALING WITH SEAWEED From cancer to punctured lungs, applications are promising
R
achael Oldinski would like to cure cancer, replace cartilage, and patch punctured lungs—with seaweed. Okay, it’s more complicated than that. But, one afternoon this spring, behind the locked doors of her lab in Votey Hall—the Engineered Biomaterials Research Laboratory—the professor points to three of her graduate students and four undergrads. “Everyone here works with alginate,” she says, “which is purified seaweed.”
You might call it the goo lab. Canaan McKenzie ’16 holds up a clear strip of gelatinous plastic that he made with several natural products including alginate and collagen. “The collagen is from the livestock industry,” he says. “It’s exactly the same stuff as goes into Jell-O.” Sarah Blatt ’16 is working with Oldinski to create a jelly to see how well it will mimic the properties of the inner region of the human spine. Normally, this nucleus pulposus gel is the shock absorber within the discs between each vertebra. “But in disease, that jelly leaks out,” Oldinski says. So, as a senior project, Blatt is looking for a “material replacement,” she says. “We also work, literally, with snot,” Oldinski says with an unguarded smile. “We have several projects that use hyaluronic acid,” the clear goo that the body creates to lubricate joints, shape eyeballs and, yes, “it’s snot,” Oldinski says.
Follow Rachael Oldinski on twitter: @uvmEBRL
10