Nanomedicine Could Improve Surgical Implants

April 29, 2014

(Boston Globe) – When New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski missed the first six games of last season because of a forearm injury, what kept him off the field was not the broken bone he suffered months earlier but rather a persistent infection where he received a metal plate to help repair his arm. Tom Webster, a chemical engineer at Northeastern University, believes Gronkowski might have avoided infection and returned to action faster if the plate had been made of a new kind of material in development at his nanomedicine laboratory.