In 1969, Professor Larry Hench developed a glass that can grow with bones. His close friend and colleague, David Greenspan, helped Professor Hench develop the material into BioGlass, a product that is used in orthopedic and dental bone graft materials. David, a native of Brooklyn, wanted to be a drummer but turned to glass blowing instead. His big insight into entrepreneurship? “Never lie to yourself.” This episode was originally released on September 25, 2018.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01
Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James, Robert Cade who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them. We'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:39
Glass that lives. That's the subject of our Radio Cade podcast today and in the studio with me, I have David Greenspan. David, welcome.

David Greenspan: 0:47
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here and it's great to see the Cade Museum alive and well.

Richard Miles: 0:52
Thank you. Thank you. All right. Before we talk about you, David, which is, I know probably your favorite subject, right? Of course. Let's tell the listeners a bit about BioGlass, which is the invention that you're associated with. Just explain to me in very simple terms, what is the core technology underneath it and sort of how does it work and then we'll come back later and talk about the applications in the market and that sort of stuff.

David Greenspan: 1:15
Bioglass is a bio material and there are lots of biomaterials you can think of. Metals for hips, knees, materials for wound healing, gauze, bandages, all biomaterials heart valves, some are synthetic some are natural. Bioglass is a form of glass and of course glass itself as a chemistry has lots of different compositions, lots of different properties within that category. BioGlass is unique because when it's implanted, and originally it was used as a bone regenerative material. When it's implanted in bone, it actually reacts like sugar dissolves. Well, much more slowly BioGlass the atoms, the Ions in BioGlass will react and actually stimulates bone healing and that was the core Aha moment.

Richard Miles: 2:05
I see.

David Greenspan: 2:06
So basically that was the concept and the original material and from that and from learning about how this glass reacts and how you could change the composition slightly and change, the reactions, the field kind of broadened out into applications well beyond just trying to help bone healing.

Richard Miles: 2:25
So that sounds both fascinating and incredibly complicated at the same time because unlike what your earlier examples about a metal hip, there you're basically just taking an object, sticking it in the body and it replaces the previous object, but BioGlass really sounds quite different in that it is actually interacting with the body itself.

David Greenspan: 2:44
Yeah, it is different and when professor Larry Hinch actually invented the material, the first experiments, and he had a whole series of thought processes, which actually we can explore that, but it actually wasn't... she wasn't... I'm going to make a material that's going to bond to bone. It was I'm going to make a more compatible material that we can put in the body. There's a great quote by Isaac Asimov that I'm going to butcher right now, but basically he said the most profound moment in science is not "Eureka",