Plastic has always had a torrid time. When it was first invented, it was hailed as a revolution in household products; Nowadays, it’s more the villain of the piece. Made from oil, it’s seen as an un-green product with many people seeking alternatives. The Science Museum in London is holding an exhibition this week which may well swing people’s views of plastic back to positive – plastic really can save lives.

Plastic Blood
Synthetic blood is like the holy grail of modern medicine and scientists at the University of Sheffield believe they may soon crack the secret of synthetic blood. They are working on a honey-like paste which, when added to water, turns into instant synthetic blood. Their paste is based on polyethlyene glycol, a substance most commonly found in shampoos and toothpaste. From this, a plastic version of haemoglobin can be made.

Blood is always in short supply. Currently, if a patient has severe blood loss, they can be given plasma to ensure that the heart has something to pump around the body to ensure that it keeps pumping and doesn’t have a heart attack. If the plasma were to be substituted with blood (synthetic or otherwise), organ and brain damage could be prevented because oxygen would also be pumped around the body.

One of the best things about the team’s synthetic blood is that it doesn’t need to be refrigerated so it has a long shelflife. It can also be transported easily, so ambulances could have a ready store in small packets and the paramedics could make up the blood as and when needed. It also may be a cheaper alternative to donated blood, which currently costs about £100 per unit. According to Dr Twynam, leader of the Sheffield team, the plastic blood should be a lot cheaper to produce. According to Dr Twynam, there is a strong possibitity that we will see plastic blood being used regularly in as little as 10 years time.

Plastic Drug Bubbles
Our bodies are a delicate and finely tuned operation. The cells in our body are very strict about what they let in and out which can be a problem when a drug needs to enter the cells of the body. A Sheffield scientist believes he has broken this problem and created a plastic bubble which can fool the body into thinking that the bubble is natural and therefore should be allowed into the cell. Once the bubble has reached it’s destination, the contents are dispersed by using a controlled explosion.

Dr Giuseppe Battaglia has said he has made these bubbles from the plastic molecules used in toothpaste and that they are suitable for transporting all sorts of things – from DNA to antibodies to proteins.

The bubbles are a fantastic step forward for some treatments. We cannot inject DNA directly into the body at present because our immune systems destroy it quickly, however this unique system would be able to carry the DNA unharmed through the body to the cells where is was needed. Dr Battaglia hopes that within the next seven years, his research will be being used.

Plastic Skin
Burns can be horrific. Often when a patient is burnt, other areas of skin are removed and grafted onto the burn site. Naturally, it would be better not to have to remove skin from the body at all. And that’s where Professor Sheila MacNeil and her team come in. They are working on 3D plastic skin grafts where a scaffolding layer is built, and then a tiny piece of the patient’s skin is added and grown onto the scaffolding to produce a large skin graft to cover the wound.

At present, doctors use skin from skin banks which originates from dead people. The donor skin cells are stripped leaving a basic scaffolding, and the patient’s skin is then added to the scaffolding. However, donated skin is very scarce, and using skin in this way means there is a risk of infections and disease. Plastic skin would be a massive step forward – it does not rely on donations so would be far more readily available.

As the plastic scaffolding is very similar to normal skin in both looks and feel, skin cells like to grow on it. Over time, the plastic scaffolding will degrade without a reaction or causing infection.

Professor MacNeil has hopes that her work will be developed and used within the next five years, however she warns that plastic skin will never be a full replacement for what nature gave us. “If you want something to last a lifetime, you have to have a patient’s own cells doing the job in the long term.”

So, next time you see plastic getting a poor rap, remember that it also can help to save lives.