Galt's Gulch

I think I just met a real Hank Rearden

Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 7 months ago to The Gulch: General
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Prof. Larry Hench was just hired on to our biomedical engineering faculty a few months ago. Last night I had him describe his invention of Bioglass, a ceramic that induces bone formation around it. It will have the impact of Rearden metal. Already more than 5 million people use it, mostly as an ingredient in a variant of Sensodyne toothpaste that you can't get in the US.
SOURCE URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioglass

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  • Posted by $ jarvisc 11 years, 7 months ago
    Toothpaste with this stuff is, to me, a fascinating idea. Others may not sympathize with my reasoning but I will not see a dentist, so anything that helps me take care of my own teeth is valuable to me. Thank you.
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    • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 7 months ago
      If you are going to get the toothpaste, it is Sensodyne Repair & Protect (with Novamin) or Sensodyne Complete Protection (with Novamin). If it doesn't say "with Novamin", it does not have the Bioglass in it. FDA won't approve it for that use yet, even though 5 million people have used it in Canada and Europe. Prof. Hench has the same view of government that we do and minced no words during his talk.

      You can get the toothpaste from Singapore or Hong Kong.
      http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sensodyne-Repair...
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  • Posted by irrelevantcommentforpoint 11 years, 7 months ago
    Excellent.
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    • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 7 months ago
      He is truly excellent. Dr. Hench was the first to discover a composition of matter that actually engenders bone formation. Most implants just sit there and never truly integrate with the surrounding tissue, thereby causing no small number of problems.
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      • Posted by iroseland 11 years, 7 months ago
        I have to admit there are few things cooler than meeting folks like this. Its also cool to see their enthusiasm for what they are doing spread like a virus to the people around them.
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        • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 7 months ago
          After listening to Larry Hench's talk last night, I got one key puzzle piece in the tissue regeneration puzzle. The degradation acidic solutions generated during bone resorption stimulate vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), the key growth factor necessary for causing blood vessels to grow toward new tissue. Another guy we just interviewed taught me how to turn off that growth factor. Turning off that growth factor is the key to silencing cancer. So now I have two pieces in the puzzle that actually connect with each other. The problem with solving puzzles like this is that you don't know what the pieces look like.
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          • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 7 months ago
            The big problem that most people have had in trying to engineer tissue is that they don't know what the key control variables are, let alone the levels. I just found the answer to what I think is the most important such control variable. A lot of people can grow tissue, but they can't get it to stop growing. What is unique about Larry Hench's approach is how efficiently it uses the body's own repair system to do such control.
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