internal bleeding is a leading cause of death on the battlefield but a new injectable material developed by team of researchers from texas a&m university and the massachusetts institute of technology could buy wounded soldiers the time they need to survive by preventing blood loss from serious internal injuries the potentially life-saving treatment comes in the form of a biodegradable gelatin substance that has been embedded with nano-sized silicate discs that aid in coagulation once injected the material locks into place at the site of the injury and rapidly decreases the time it takes for blood to clot – in some instances by a whopping 77 percent says akhilesh gaharwar assistant professor of biomedical engineering at texas a&m and member of the research team the teams findings are detailed in the scientific journal acs nano and supported by the us army research office though its still in early testing gaharwar envisions the biomaterial being preloaded into syringes that soldiers can carry with them into combat situations if a soldier experiences a penetrating incompressible injury – one where it is difficult if not impossible to apply the pressure needed to stop the bleeding – he or she can inject the material into the wound site where it will trigger a rapid coagulation and provide enough time to get to a medical facility for treatment he says the time to get to a medical facility can take a half hour to an hour and this hour is crucial; it can decide life and death gaharwar says our materials combination of injectability rapid mechanical recovery physiological stability and the ability to promote coagulation result in a hemostat for treating incompressible wounds in out-of-hospital emergency situations gaharwar says unlike some injectable solutions which pose the risk of flowing to other parts of the body and forming unintended and potentially harmful clot formations the material designed by gaharwar and his colleagues solidifies at the site of the wound and begins promoting coagulation in the targeted area whats more it accomplishes this gaharwar explains without the need for applied pressure separating it from other types of wound treatments such as tourniquets patches and sealants most of these penetrating injuries which today are the result of explosive devices rupture blood vessels and create internal hemorrhages through which a person is constantly losing blood gaharwar notes you cant apply pressure inside your body so you have to have something that can quickly clot the blood without needing pressure in order to engineer the material gaharwar and his fellow researchers went about modifying a substance known as a hydrogel hydrogels are biodegradable materials used in a number of biomedical applications because of their compatibility with the body and its processes by inserting two-dimensional nanoplatelets into the hydrogel the team was able to tweak the mechanical properties of material essentially they manipulated the material so that it could be injected into the body and then regain its shape once inside the body – something necessary for locking itself in place at the wound site gaharwar explains the use of two-dimensional materials gaharwar says represents a new direction in biomedical engineering two-dimensional materials are ultrathin substances with high surface area but a thickness of a few nanometers or less think of a sheet of paper but on a much smaller scale for example a sheet of paper is 100 000 nanometers thick; gaharwars nanoplatelets are one nanometer thick