2013 39th Annual Northeast Bioengineering Conference

ChitO2-Clot
A Novel Hemostatic & Oxygen Releasing Biomaterial for Traumatic Injuries

George Ulsh, Dung Le, Maxwell McDermott, Jennifer Moy, Dr. George Collins
Department of Biomedical Engineering
New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)
Newark, United States
gju2@njit.edu

Abstract— ChitO2-Clot is a novel hemostatic wound

dressing. ChitO2-Clot will help facilitate coagulation/clot
formation as well as providing oxygen to the wound, all
while being cost effective and competitive with current
hemostatic dressings. The product is composed of a
micro/nano sized fibrous mat made of chitosan that is doped
with Perfluorocarbons (oxygen carrier). The user would pack
a hemorrhaging wound with ChitO2-Clot in order to stop the
bleeding. The chitosan in ChitO2-Clot rapidly absorbs the
blood in the wound bed and forms a gelatinous clot that fills
the empty void of the wound. The gelatinous clot filling this
void in the tissue applies pressure to the damaged
vasculature, which prevents further bleeding. Chitosan also
activates the clot clotting cascade and causes the
agglutination of red blood cells, accelerates coagulation in
vivo by influencing the activation of platelets. The
Perfluorocarbons (oxygen career) release oxygen into the
wound bed to help facilitate the wound healing process. Over
time, the chitosan in ChitO2-Clot will be reabsorbed by the
body and converted into sugar, while the Perfluorocarbon
(PFC) is expelled via gas exchange in the lungs.
Keywords-(Traumatic Injury, Hemostatic, Wound Healing,
Oxygen-Releasing, Naturally Derived, Re-absorbable,
Biomaterials)
I. INTRODUCTION
Our product aims to stem uncontrolled blood loss on the
battlefield. Nearly a quarter of the 4,596 combat deaths in
Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2011 were
“potentially survivable.” [1]. Uncontrolled blood loss was the
leading cause of death in 90% of the potentially survivable
battlefield cases [1]. And in 80% of those cases, the wounded
patient died in a military treatment facility [1]. That’s over a
thousand sons and daughters who never came back to their
families… Our product intends to reduce that number
significantly. Our goal was to create a cost effective, chitosan
based wound dressing material with inherent microbicidal
properties and oxygen releasing to create a non-toxic
protective barrier with greatly enhanced bacterial and fungal
resistance. We were focused on stopping the most common
and deadly hospital acquired infection, Methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) [2]. MRSA is highly
adaptable and very resistant to antibiotics so we focused on
alternative Microbicidal Agents [3].
II. METHODOLOGY
Our design is intended to replace existing traditional
cotton gauzes and current hemostatic gauzes, used for
traumatic injuries, as well as all other bandage material. Our
product is used in the same fashion as these current
alternatives. The appearance of our material is even similar to
that of cotton substrates. This was done purposively to
increase ease of use for the end user. ChitO2-Clot is packed
into a wound, it stops bleeding by rapidly swelling and
forming a gelatinous clot. ChitO2-Clot is then removed if
needed by medical personal. If remnants of ChitO 2-Clot are
left in the patient there is no cause for alarm because chitosan
eventually breaks down into sugars and is reabsorbed into the
body, while the Perfluorocarbon (PFC) is expelled via gas
exchange in the lungs. We have electrospun chitosan to form
the majority of our substrate. Chitosan is naturally
hemostatic, microbicidal, and bioresorbable lending itself to
be a perfect wound healing material [4]. The chitosan causes
increased permeability and the rupture of bacterial and fungal
membranes. We choose to electrospin chitosan into a
micro/nano-fiber mat because (Figure 1) it allowed us to
optimize surface area for adhesion and in turn, clotting [5].
Our novelty comes from our incorporation of an oxygen
carrier, PFC (specifically Perfluorotributlamine PFTBA).
PFCs are extremely soluble to oxygen and can completely
release withheld oxygen in the presence of a concentration
gradient [6]. By diffusing oxygen into the wound, our gauze
will increase cell viability around the damaged tissue [6].
Secondly we theorize that a negative oxygen ion will elicit an
immune response furthering our functionality [7]. Both
chitosan and PFTBA have been used extensively in other
applications and are approved by the FDA. ChitO2-Clot is a
Class I device and would enter the market via 510K based on
Z-Medica’s Combat Gauze, and Hemcon’s Chitogauze.

978-0-7695-4964-4/13 $26.00 © 2013 IEEE 100

DOI 10.1109/NEBEC.2013.67
 um and was magnified 203.1x times using a digital
microscope. On our third trial we were able to produce
reproducible Chitosan/PFTBA mats via electrospinning and
were able to sterilize them for use, they resemble Figure 3.
However, we are still optimizing the amount of our oxygen-
releasing agent (PFTBA).

Figure 1: SEM Image of electrospun chitosan nano-fiber mat at 50,000x

original magnification [8]

III. RESULTS
For our first trial of making the chitosan mixture solution,
we mixed 36mL of acetic acid with 4mL of deionized water
in order to achieve 90% acetic acid. That 40mL of aqueous
acid solution was poured into varying amounts of chitosan, as Figure 4: Thin Section of Chitosan mat
seen in Figure 2.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
To my fellow group members and co-authors Dung Le,
Jennifer Moy, and Maxwell McDermott thank you, for
without your efforts none of this was possible. And a special
thanks to Dr. George Collins, Dr. Hammond, Dr. Cho, and
NJIT for aiding us in this endeavor.

REFERENCES
Figure 2: Chitosan with varying wt%(1, 2, 3, 5, 7) in 90% Acetic Acid

[1] P. Kime, " Study: 25% of War Deaths Medically Preventable,"

The mixture was stirred by magnetic stirring bar at 1200 rpm
for 24 hours. It turns out that between 1wt% and 2wt% the
proper viscosity is achieved for electrospinning in our
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Our electrospinning thus far has produced usable
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However this process still needs to be optimized to achieve
reproducible mats as seen in Figure 3.
[3]
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[5]
[6]
Figure 3: Chitosan nano-fiber mat [8]
[7]
Our second trial used Trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) instead of
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the mat can be seen in Figure 4. The scale of Figure 4 is 200
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