Introducing the New Nano-Bio Convergence
0 Welcome to the inaugural issue of our new journal: Nano-Bio Convergence!
New beginnings are a great time to reflect on past accomplishments and consider what lies ahead. As I write this inaugural editorial, I am reminded of where the field of nano-bio convergence has been - and of my own journey. As a PhD student, I was told that nanotechnology and its use in biology were merely hype and would never amount to anything (this was in 1995). When I started my first company as a new professor at Purdue University, many people still questioned what “nanomedicine” even meant (in 2000). As an associate professor at Brown University in 2010, colleagues asked how I could possibly teach anything meaningful in nanomedicine. And even as department chair of chemical engineering and a full professor at Northeastern University until 2021 - after my start-up companies had already treated over 20,000 patients with successful implant outcomes - some professors and administrators continued to question our results out of jealousy or competitiveness.
Thankfully, for those thousands of patients, I persisted. Ultimately, I left Northeastern University and its negative, ultra-competitive environment, devoting myself fully to advancing my companies and promoting a now fully matured nano-bio convergence field - one ready to push boundaries even further.
For anyone who wishes to follow, here is my story: not easy, but very fulfilling.
Ever since I was six years old and hit by a car, immediately breaking my femur, bones have fascinated me. How do bones grow? How do they heal? What are they made of? I had so many questions - much to the exhaustion of my family and doctor. I was fortunate: my femur healed naturally because I was young. Still, I lost a summer to traction, a body cast, and learning to walk, run, and ride a bike again. It is remarkable how much you can forget at that age while recovering from breaking the largest bone in your body. But it could have been far worse. I could have required an implant or faced lifelong disability.
In graduate school, I even claimed I became faster after my femur healed - only to learn that, indeed, correctly healed bone can be stronger than before the fracture. This experience only strengthened my curiosity in bone health, healing, and implants. My accident at age six continues to motivate me today at age 54.
This was my life-changing event - my "impact". It ultimately led me to complete a PhD thesis 23 years later that introduced nanotechnology to orthopedics. In the 1990s, we published the first paper demonstrating that nanoparticles could mimic the natural nanotexture of bone and thereby improve bone growth [Figure 1][1-2]. Bone is a natural nanocomposite material, with nanometer-scale calcium phosphate crystals - over 104 times smaller than the diameter of a strand of hair - providing critical nanotopographical cues to osteoblasts.
Figure 1. 1998: Representative scanning electron image of a nanostructured Ti-based implant (right) that improves osteoblast function compared to current implants (left). Magnification = 40KX. Such work led to the first issued patent using nanomaterials to promote bone growth which was eventually licensed to and formed Nanovis in 2006 with nano-textured implants now in over 40,000 humans[1-3].
That’s a nano-bio convergence.
In college, I asked the simple question that changed my life and the lives of many others: If osteoblasts form and reside in nanostructured bone, should not our implants also possess nanoscale features? At that time, orthopedic implants exhibited micron-scale textures but lacked biologically inspired nanometer features. As graduate students, we filed and received the first issued patent for using nanomaterials to improve bone growth[3]. This became the foundation of my first start-up company, Nanovis, in 2006.
That’s a nano-bio convergence.
This was before the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative, which has since invested over 45 billion U.S. dollars into research exploring the benefits of nanotechnology across society. This was before Michael Crichton’s bestselling book Prey, where nanorobots wreak havoc on the world; before movies and video games used the word "nano" in their titles; and before the famous Apple iPod nano® was introduced in 2001 to store only 1,000 songs. This was even before the National Science Foundation had a definition for nanotechnology, which was adopted in 1999-2000. Despite all of this, we were there - knee-deep in “nano” before anyone else was.
That’s a nano-bio convergence.
Things moved very quickly after these initial experiments and publications. As a professor at Purdue University from 2000-2005, we were the first to show increased bone growth on composites containing nanomaterials[4-6], nanotextured polymers[7-11], and other nanometals[12-16]. We also showed that the use of nanomaterials to improve tissue growth extended beyond bone to cartilage [Figure 2], vascular tissue [Figure 3], the bladder [Figure 4], the nervous system [Figure 5], and more[17-24].
Figure 2. 2002: Metals with nanotextures improve cartilage and orthopedic soft tissue growth. Scanning electron microscope (10KX) image of a titanium implant with nanoscale features (Left) that improve cartilage growth in a sheep model after 14 days as demonstrated by the perpendicular collagen fibers attaching to the nanotextures (Right).
Figure 3. 2004: Representative scanning electron microscope image of stents with aligned nanotextures (bottom) compared to nano-smooth textures (top) which improve endothelial cell coverage and stent performance. Scanning electron microscope magnification = 40KX.
Figure 4. 2004: Representative atomic force microscope (AFM) images of polymers with nanotextures (right) compared to nano-smooth (left) which improve bladder tissue growth in a rat bladder defect model after 1 week.
Figure 5. 2005: Neural probes with nanotextures improve nervous system tissue regeneration. Mouse brain tissue sections show increased brain tissue interactions with carbon nanotubes (black) inserted into the brain after 21 days. Left: low magnification showing the whole brain; Right: high magnification showing improved interactions between carbon nanotubes and brain tissue.
That’s a nano-bio convergence.
We eventually demonstrated that nanomaterials can decrease bacterial attachment and growth [Figure 6][25-32], inhibit inflammation[33-36], and more - without using pharmaceutical agents or antibiotics, but instead applying a well-defined equation [Figure 7] to produce specific nanoscale surface features that modify surface energy and influence cell adhesion and function[37-39].
Figure 6. 2005: Representative scanning electron microscope images of a nanotextured (right) compared to a nano-smooth (left) Ti-based implant that reduces MRSA colonization. Magnification = 40KX.
Figure 7. 2008: The first ever equation that predicts the size of nanofeatures to implement on a medical device to change surface energy (left contact angle shows more hydrophobic and right shows more hydrophilic) to optimize initial protein adsorption that will control tissue growth, decrease infection, and limit inflammation (or scar tissue growth). Representative scanning electron microscope images of Ti-based implants are shown at Magnification = 40KX.
That’s a nano-bio convergence.
We found that nanomaterials, due to their high surface area-to-volume ratios, possess unique surface energies that promote the adsorption of proteins known to improve osteoblast adhesion, proliferation, and bone formation. We filed patents along the way, many of which were eventually licensed to Nanovis and others for commercialization[40-44]. This all started in 1998 and continues today.
That’s a nano-bio convergence.
But through it all, what has impressed me most is that the field of nano-bio convergence continues to push the fundamental science behind why nanomaterials work in orthopedics and medicine. In my experience, many academics and companies do not care deeply about fundamental science. My companies certainly do, and invest heavily in it. To this day, I often hear companies talk about new materials and technologies, yet they have no idea why their advances work. If you do not know how your biomaterials work, are you even sure they are working?
My companies and academic labs have taken a different approach - one rooted deeply in science. Emphasize the science. Emphasize the fundamentals. Follow the research. When you do so, your technology will grow and become more impactful. You will also inspire many who follow. Through this emphasis on science, we have already succeeded. Over the years, we have received grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other agencies - placing their “stamp of approval” on our nanoscience and enabling its further development. We were, and still are, challenged by many in the field who did not think nanotechnology would ever help anyone. Yet we eventually made it into humans - now with over 40,000 implants improving health, with no reports of implant infection or failure.
That’s a nano bio convergence.
But we are not done. We need to ask more questions. We need to develop better materials and fully learn from the nano-bio convergence. That is what we aim to do with this new journal: push boundaries, pioneer new materials and knowledge, and provide an avenue for the high-risk research and publications necessary to improve health, medicine, and society.
I often think back to my six-year-old self and ask “what if.” What if I had never been hit by a car? What if my femur had not healed correctly? What if I had needed an implant? What if the millions of patients who break a bone each year do not heal correctly? What if they become infected? I am proud to have been part of a journey that has developed implants now succeeding in humans; however, our work is not done. As scientists, our problems are never done - and today is no different. As our average global life expectancy is decreasing[45], medicine needs our help now more than ever. Medicine needs nano-bio convergence.
With everyone’s help, pioneering nanotechnology and emphasizing fundamental science, anything is possible. Stents with nanotextures. Anti-infective catheters with nanometer-scale surface features. Implantable sensors that diagnose and simultaneously prevent disease. Nanostructured biodegradable metals. An understanding of cellular function at the nanoscale. Incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and other yet-to-be-imagined technologies into the nano-bio convergence.
As in 1998, the impact of nano-bio convergence remains limitless today. We must continue to push the fundamental science behind why nanotechnology works in biology. And once you know why something works, the possibilities are endless.
I hope you join me in this next phase of the journey. Read our journal. Submit to our journal. Engage in our journal.
Buckle up - we are just getting started!
Welcome to the Nano-Bio Convergence.
DECLARATIONS
Authors’ contributions
The author contributed solely to the article.
Availability of data and materials
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Financial support and sponsorship
Not applicable.
Conflicts of interest
Webster, T. J. serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Nano-Bio Convergence, but was not involved in any aspects of the editorial process, particularly in reviewer selection, manuscript handling, or decision making.
Ethical approval and consent to participate
Not applicable.
Consent for publication
Not applicable.
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2025.
REFERENCES
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