A drug delivery gel that could be a vaccine for California’s wildfires
Materials scientists often stumble upon wildly different applications for materials they have created. Eric Appel, a professor at the Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Stanford University found this out to his pleasant surprise, in a conversation with his brother in law, a former firefighter in Hawaii.
When you get sick, your body develops an inflammatory response and you get a fever. As outrageously sci-fi as it sounds, a material made for treating diseases might have inspired a solution for preventing Nature’s fevers: Wildfires.
Climate change and the unseasonal variation in rainfall patterns it brings, has pushed several biomes over the tipping point. High profile examples worldwide are the annually worsening California fires, the UK, even in the Arctic. Human-made fires, even by as small a transgression as tossing a cigarette butt into the brush, are far more likely today to become roaring infernos: drier brush, grass and trees; and record strong offshore winds causing faster spread, though there is no direct link between climate change and these strong winds.
On Monday night, global icons LeBron James and Arnold Schwarzenegger had to evacuate their posh homes on the outskirts of LA. Not even King James and the Terminator were invincible from a steadily worsening concern.
Appel, who works on Supramolecular biomaterials (changing things with intermolecular forces), came up with a gel used for drug delivery. To treat diseases like HIV, antibodies are loaded into the gel, which is injected into the body. However, Appel noticed a few things — this gel also shared properties that are requirements of a flame retardant for vegetation. Namely being non-toxic, biodegradable, and not hampering the natural functions of the target.
The problem with the current way we use science to tackle wildfires is that it’s solely reactive — we dump compounds like APP (Ammonium polyphosphate), which produces water on getting burnt by the fire you’re releasing it on. Which helps.. sometimes. Existing flame retardants which are applied beforehand get washed off after a single rain, and aren’t really very effective. Which is where Appel’s gel promises to come in and change everything. Made from cellulose polymers (a chemical cousin of grass) that act as ‘bridges’ crosslinking colloidal particles of silica (essentially, like, sand), it behaves like a ‘velcro’ that prevents grasses from burning rapidly.
The beauty of this retro-fitted solution is that it won’t get washed away for potentially an entire fire season (California fires strike in the Fall season, before the first rains) and is an eminently implementable one —standard equipment like hydroseeders, used to deposit a slurry of fertilizer and seeds, can be rejigged to spread the gel. The most vulnerable areas like steep inclines and around roads and utility infrastructure (electric poles, transformers) can be targeted effectively.
The situation is more urgent than it appears, and we need innovative solutions, fast. If the February 2019 wildfire in Bandipur National Park, Karnataka is any indicator, India is no less vulnerable than Arnie’s chateau. We could do worse than to retrofit cross-disciplinary solutions in search of innovation.
Pranav Krishnan is a sophomore undergraduate from the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, with a keen interest in potentially world-changing materials innovations. He has written previously about IIT-alumni startups and student teams at international tech competitions. He is an editor at IIT Tech Ambit, as well as being a debater and actor, representing the institute
