Harvard-MIT Team's New Synthetic Vocal Cord Gel Gives Voice to the Voiceless
Synthetic Vocal Cords A polymer gel developed by a joint Harvard-MIT team's polymer gel vibrates just like the real thing. MIT News Call it a silent killer: some 6 percent of the U.S. population has some kind of voice disorder, most of those resulting from scarring of the vocal cords that can lead to diminishing or even total loss of the ability to speak. Giving voice to the voiceless, a team of Harvard and MIT researchers have developed a synthetic, injectable material that can be implanted into scarred vocal cords to restore their function. Rather than approaching the problem as a physiological one, they looked at the vocal cords as a mechanical issue. That is, they didn't attack the scar tissue in the vocal cords but devised a fix for it. That fix came in the form of a material known as polyethylene glycol (PEG), which they chose because it is already...