Bone That Grows Back

Boning Up

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, more than half of all injuries that befall Americans every year involve a broken bone or an injured joint. As the huge baby-boom generation continues to pass the age of 50, bone and joint injuries affect the lives of many more people. As people age and their bones grow thinner, fractures can cripple permanently.

At present, the solution to arthritic, cancerous or injured bones and joints is stainless-steel replacements. Metal can match the strength of natural bone, but it is heavy and inflexible—not to mention embarrassing when your new knee triggers security alarms at airport checkpoints.

At Northwestern University, chemist Samuel I. Stupp thinks that a material designed to match bone more closely than metal could encourage natural bone cells to form layers around it and speed healing. Stupp, director of Northwestern’s Institute for Bioengineering and Nanoscience in Advanced Medicine, believes that nanotechnology can lead to regenerative medicine, where the body heals itself. He likes to mimic nature by working from the bottom up: “We design molecules so that they organize themselves into new materials to solve medical problems”—like the challenge of making bone that grows back.