Bioglass® devices are have been available for use in the repair of osseous defects throughout the skeletal system for over a decade and have been used in over 800,000 clinical applications world wide.

In 1967, University of Florida (UF) materials engineer, Larry Hench, shared a bus ride with a colonel in charge of M.A.S.H. supplies.  The officer described the horrors of soldiers in Vietnam who had limbs amputated because of bullet shockwaves that shattered bones beyond repair.  He challenged Hench to come up with better prosthesis materials than existed at that time.

Hench was aware of types of glass that contain higher levels of calcium than others, and theorized that the body might be less apt to reject prostheses made of the calcium-based glass.  In 1968, he received funding from the U.S. Army Medical R&D Command to test the possible use of glass as a biomaterial.

The first compositions created bonded to living bone and tissue, and thus Bioglass® was born.  Unlike steel or other implants, Bioglass was not rejected.  In fact, Bioglass slowly releases small amounts of soluble silica and calcium, which in turn activate seven families of genes present in bone cells, causing them to create new, healthy bone. 

Bioglass® proved to have multiple useful applications.  Trials were done in 1984 on implanted Bioglass middle-ear prostheses at the UF College of Medicine which was later cleared for clinical use.  Larry Hench is most proud of Bioglass applications in periodontics which is marketed as PerioGlas® to dentists and oral surgeons as a bone graft substitute saves thousands of teeth from loss every year.

Hench is still using the ideas he originated at UF to expand the field of bioengineering.  Currently, as a professor at Imperial College Tissue Engineering Center in London, he is working on trying to activate cells in tissues to repair themselves.

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