Nanowire coating may speed bone healing

Prof Sheikh Akbar, Ohio State University

Broken bones and joint replacements may soon be able to heal quicker thanks to a “nanowire” coating for medical implants developed by a team in Ohio State University.

Bone cells seem to grow and reproduce nearly twice as quickly on a textured surface made from metal oxide wires, each tens of thousands of times thinner than a human hair. The coating could help people who have knee and hip replacements, dental implants or broken bones that need screws and plates for repair.

“What’s really exciting about this technique is that we don’t have to carve the nanowires from a solid piece of metal or alloy,” says Prof Sheikh Akbar, who published the research in Ceramics International.  “We can grow them from scratch, by exploiting the physics and chemistry of the materials.”