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Memorial Tributes: Volume 22 (2019)

Chapter: LARRY L. HENCH

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Suggested Citation:"LARRY L. HENCH." National Academy of Engineering. 2019. Memorial Tributes: Volume 22. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25543.
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Suggested Citation:"LARRY L. HENCH." National Academy of Engineering. 2019. Memorial Tributes: Volume 22. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25543.
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Suggested Citation:"LARRY L. HENCH." National Academy of Engineering. 2019. Memorial Tributes: Volume 22. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25543.
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LARRY L. HENCH

1938–2015

Elected in 2000

“For the development of bioactive glasses for human prostheses and fundamental studies of glass corrosion.”

BY MARTIN E. GLICKSMAN AND MICHAEL FENN

LARRY L. HENCH passed away at the age of 77, on December 16, 2015, at his home in Ft. Myers, Florida.

He was born November 21, 1938, to Clarence and Mary Hench and raised on their farm in the rural town of Tiro, Ohio, where he graduated from high school with a few dozen fellow students. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1961 and his doctoral degree in 1964, both in ceramic engineering, from the Ohio State University, and began his academic career in 1964 as a young professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Florida.

His ceramics research was focused initially on structural ceramics for radiation and nuclear waste applications. It was a casual conversation in 1967 with an Army colonel seated next to him on a bus ride from a conference that changed the course of biomaterials history.

The colonel explained to Larry the pressing need for a material that could help regenerate or repair the lost limbs of injured soldiers returning home from the Vietnam War. It was that serendipitous conversation that convinced Larry to redirect his efforts to the development of a new bioactive material capable of mimicking the properties of human mineralized bone. His decision prompted a series of events leading to a monumental discovery.

Suggested Citation:"LARRY L. HENCH." National Academy of Engineering. 2019. Memorial Tributes: Volume 22. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25543.
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Although he lacked medical training, he understood that bone was fundamentally a living ceramic and fell within the scope of his scientific interests. With that intellectual stimulus, he set out to create a compatible inorganic material suited for implantation and regeneration of human bone tissue.

After expanding his understanding of ceramics with knowledge garnered from several textbooks familiar at the time to first-year medical students, Larry successfully applied for and received a small research grant from the US Army Medical R&D Command. That funding was the second in a series of three decisive events that led to the discovery of Bioglass.

Through the intense efforts of Larry and his graduate students, the first manmade material to bond to living tissue was invented in 1969, Bioglass 45S5. This was the third critical step, in which Larry determined the compositional “sweet spot” for the first synthesis of glassy biomaterials, which his research team proved to be a success: bonding with living bone without inflammatory rejection.

The story of the creation of Bioglass is one that many might call a series of fortunate coincidences, pure chance, or just plain luck, but Larry often referred to the chronology as “a series of three miracles.”

These early experiments were the foundation of the sub-field of bioactive materials and led to the coining of the term bioactive glass. They established a benchmark, still in use, to characterize the bioactivity of an inorganic material.

Bioglass led to successes throughout the 1980s and 1990s, many resulting in patent filings and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals. Of particular importance to the hearing impaired was the FDA’s approval in the mid-1980s of the use of bioactive glass devices as ossicular chain implants for the reconstruction of the minuscule bones of the middle ear to restore hearing.

Subsequent FDA approval allowed bioactive glass implants to replace missing teeth, enabling maintenance of jaw stability and repair of maxillofacial bone defects. In the 1990s the FDA approved the use of a particulate form of bioactive glass to support new bone growth to repair damage from periodontal

Suggested Citation:"LARRY L. HENCH." National Academy of Engineering. 2019. Memorial Tributes: Volume 22. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25543.
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disease. Other FDA-approved applications followed for Bioglass applications in orthopaedic surgery, including repair of bone lesions and spinal defects, and for revision surgeries of failed hip and knee prostheses. Bioglass 45S5 and related compositions in clinical use throughout the world have helped to repair bones, joints, and teeth for millions of people.

Additionally, twelve companies, including US Biomaterials Corp. and NovaBone Products LLC, were founded on technologies fundamentally created in Professor Hench’s laboratories. These entrepreneurial endeavors produced a host of useful medical products that led to technology awards, created jobs, and provided significant economic gains. As just one example, a formulation of particulate Bioglass called NovaMin® (acquired by GlaxoSmithKline) is one of the active ingredients in Sensodyne® Repair and Protect toothpaste (not available in the United States).

Larry Hench held a number of academic positions and advised and mentored over a hundred graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. After serving 32 years on the faculty of the University of Florida, he “retired” as emeritus professor and in 1996 joined Imperial College London as chair of its Ceramic Materials Department.

At Imperial College his contributions to the fields of science, engineering, and medicine flourished and expanded, as he cofounded, with Julia Polak, the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Centre and was its codirector. In 2008 he established, through the London Materials Society, the annual June Wilson Memorial Award to commemorate his late wife’s achievements in the field of biomedical materials research. In 2011 Imperial College London established the Larry Hench Award for best PhD in Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering.

Larry returned to the United States after a decade at Imperial College. He was invited to assist in the development of the new Biomedical Engineering Department at the Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne. For almost three years, even as his health deteriorated, he continued to make contributions in the materials science and engineering community,

Suggested Citation:"LARRY L. HENCH." National Academy of Engineering. 2019. Memorial Tributes: Volume 22. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25543.
×

while pursuing his lifelong passion for mentoring young faculty and teaching students. He helped to establish a thriving new research center that performs innovative research on bioactive materials and biophotonics.

In the 1980s he also served on national and international committees overseeing critical research on the problem of nuclear waste storage. His pioneering work in sponge fixation of nuclear wastes in glasses remains relevant today.

At the time of his death Larry was the University Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Florida Institute of Technology’s College of Engineering, and director of the Technology Center for Medical Materials and Photonics.

Larry published over 800 research papers and 30 books, including several textbooks with his wife June Wilson (e.g., An Introduction to Bioceramics, World Scientific Press, 1993; Bioceramics, Pergamon Press, 1995; Clinical Performance of Skeletal Prostheses, Springer, 1996). He gave expression to more wide-ranging thoughts in Science, Faith and Ethics (Imperial College Press, 2001), in which he explored the costs of an increasing reliance on and faith in science and technology to extend health and life. His last book, A Biography of Bioglass, came out in 2015 (Imperial College Press). He is also credited with 32 US patents.

His seminal contributions to the field of bioceramics throughout his career of more than 45 years earned him numerous honors. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2000. He was a member of the World Academy of Ceramics and a fellow of the American Ceramic Society (ACerS), Society of Glass Technology, and Institute of Materials. He was a founder and past president of the Society for Biomaterials (1979–80) and received its Clemson Award for Basic Research in 1977 and its Founders Award in 1998. Notably, he was a Distinguished Life Member ACerS, the society’s highest award, and was awarded an honorary doctorate of engineering by the Rose Hulman Institute of Technology. In 2014 he was awarded the international Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal Award, which recognizes lifetime excellence in research and development in the field of biomaterials.

Suggested Citation:"LARRY L. HENCH." National Academy of Engineering. 2019. Memorial Tributes: Volume 22. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25543.
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Page 147
Suggested Citation:"LARRY L. HENCH." National Academy of Engineering. 2019. Memorial Tributes: Volume 22. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25543.
×
Page 148
Suggested Citation:"LARRY L. HENCH." National Academy of Engineering. 2019. Memorial Tributes: Volume 22. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25543.
×
Page 149
Suggested Citation:"LARRY L. HENCH." National Academy of Engineering. 2019. Memorial Tributes: Volume 22. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25543.
×
Page 150
Suggested Citation:"LARRY L. HENCH." National Academy of Engineering. 2019. Memorial Tributes: Volume 22. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25543.
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Page 151
Suggested Citation:"LARRY L. HENCH." National Academy of Engineering. 2019. Memorial Tributes: Volume 22. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25543.
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This is the 22nd Volume in the series Memorial Tributes compiled by the National Academy of Engineering as a personal remembrance of the lives and outstanding achievements of its members and foreign associates. These volumes are intended to stand as an enduring record of the many contributions of engineers and engineering to the benefit of humankind. In most cases, the authors of the tributes are contemporaries or colleagues who had personal knowledge of the interests and the engineering accomplishments of the deceased. Through its members and foreign associates, the Academy carries out the responsibilities for which it was established in 1964.

Under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering was formed as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. Members are elected on the basis of significant contributions to engineering theory and practice and to the literature of engineering or on the basis of demonstrated unusual accomplishments in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology. The National Academies share a responsibility to advise the federal government on matters of science and technology. The expertise and credibility that the National Academy of Engineering brings to that task stem directly from the abilities, interests, and achievements of our members and foreign associates, our colleagues and friends, whose special gifts we remember in this book.

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