Bandaids have been around for a long time. Their portability, ease of use, and rapid application have rendered them almost irreplacable in most households worldwide. As with most technologies nowadays, bandages have also undergone changes, embracing the most desired aspect of new technologies, that is to say, the strive towards convenience. We’ve seen the likes of waterproof bandages, cotton, poly, and paper versions; we’ve seen them tiny and big, plain, see-through, with mickey mouse pictures on them.

Nowadays the tendency is towards stress customization and miniaturization. There are bandages that blend in with our skin, onto which we can apply make-up, the size of large pinhead to cover an emerging blemish, for women’s fingers and men’s thumbs… and of course we have the newest hype, a liquid bandage.

Now, I personally must confess that I dislike them. They are annoying, they splatter and stick everywhere, it’s not easy to apply them evenly, and well – I usually carry one or two bandaids with me everywhere and they happen to be much smaller than a bottle of liquid BandAid. So this particular little invention, while wonderful in concept, failed to interest me in the long run.

Yesterday, however, an absolutely wonderful announcement has been made. MIT and the HK have done it again! A liquid that seals small wounds completely, with its major component being good old peptides. This has two wonderful implications – this liquid will stop feeling sticky soon after being applied because the peptides will simply attach themselves into the porous tissue inside of the wound and the seal it produces will just disappear, as the peptides will break into simpler amin-acids. No more annoying residue which took forever to remove – nothing. And as the peptides break down into basic amino-acids, they will fuel the regeneration process by supplying energy to the damaged cells, much in the way we give our bodies energy when we consume foods rich in proteins.

This may still make me a believer in liquid bandaids after all!