An entrepreneur, a doctor, and a team of researchers at MIT are trying to make surgery a less bloody proposition. They say surgeons spend about half their time in the operating room trying to manage bleeding, using sponges, clamps, sutures, glues, and substances that promote clotting. When those means fail, it's usually curtains for the patient.

But getting the technology from the research lab into the operating room won't be a cinch for Arch Therapeutics Inc., a Cambridge company formed two years ago to try to commercialize what seems like a breakthrough in blocking bleeding.

In April, Arch Therapeutics signed a deal to license the technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and it is hoping to test it in larger animals later this year (so far, it has only been tested on rodents). The company hasn't yet raised outside venture capital funding - though its founders say that's all part of the plan.

An MIT researcher, Rutledge Ellis-Behnke, had a eureka moment in 2001. He was trying to develop a substance that would help foster the regeneration of damaged nerve tissue, using protein fragments known as peptides. But during one surgical procedure, Ellis-Behnke noticed that the animal stopped bleeding after he applied the substance. He and his colleagues assumed the animal died; they were wrong. They soon realized that the transparent peptide gel had an interesting side effect: It seemed to halt bleeding within a few seconds, and then break down safely once an incision had healed.

When the peptides come into contact with blood, they appear to assemble into fibers, forming a na noscale barrier that stanches bleeding. Terrence Norchi, a Natick doctor who serves as Arch Therapeutics' chief executive, compares it to "a liquid Saran Wrap or Tyvek." Another benefit is that the gel doesn't seem to spark an immune system response. It also may be possible to apply the gel to an area before surgery, and cut through the gel - controlling the bleeding before it has a chance to get out of hand.

Steve Kelly, a onetime tech entrepreneur, spotted the research as a volunteer reviewing grant applications for MIT's Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, which aims to shepherd new ideas out of the lab and into widespread use. After building and selling several big networking companies to buyers like Siemens AG and IBM Corp., Kelly decided to shift into medical entrepreneurship.

"It felt like incremental innovations in networking just weren't going to have a big impact," he says.

Instead, he found himself gravitating toward business concepts with more "social benefit"; his first venture in that vein was Myomo Inc., a Boston company that sells a device to help patients recovering from a stroke regain the use of their arms.