Penn Bioengineering Faculty Member Paul Ducheyne Receives the European Society for Biomaterials’ International Award

Ducheyne
Paul Ducheyne, Ph.D.

by Sophie Burkholder

We would like to congratulate Paul Ducheyne, Ph.D., a Professor in the Bioengineering Department and a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery Research at Penn, on being selected for the International Award by the European Society for Biomaterials (ESB). The International Award is one of the ESB’s highest honors, recognizing scientists who have spent the majority of their careers outside of Europe. They are internationally recognized, have a high scientific profile, and have made  major contributions to the field of biomaterials. Those nominated for the award typically also have had strong collaborations with the scientific community in Europe throughout their careers.

Beyond being a professor at Penn, Ducheyne is also the founder of XeroThera, a spin-out from Penn that develops novel concepts for tissue engineering and drug delivery based on his group’s twenty years of fundamental studies of sol gel-processed, nanoporous, oxide-based materials. XeroThera’s first product formulations focus on prophylaxis and treatment of surgical infections. A pipeline is being developed building from his group’s breakthrough data   that demonstrate the utility of sol-gel synthesized silica-based nanoporous materials for therapeutic use. These materials may well represent a next generation of agents for delivery of drugs, including antibiotics, analgesics, and osteogenic and anti-inflammatory molecules.

In being selected for the International Award, Ducheyne joins only five previous recipients of it so far, a group of scientists that represents those at the top of the field in biomaterials worldwide. Ducheyne will give a presentation and award lecture for the ESB at its next annual meeting this September in Dresden, Germany. Read more about the ESB’s awards here and see the full list of 2019 awardees here.

Ducheyne Edits New Biomaterials Text

Ducheyne
Paul Ducheyne, Ph.D.

A Penn Bioengineering professor, Paul Ducheyne, Ph.D., is the editor-in-chief of the new second edition of Comprehensive Biomaterials II, released by Elsevier on June 1. The seven-volume collection, which Dr. Ducheyne edited along with faculty members from the University of California, Berkeley, Queensland University of Technology (Australia), University of Utah, and Johannes Gutenberg University Medical Center (Germany), collects articles written by experts in the field of biomaterials.

According to Elsevier, the articles “address the current status of nearly all biomaterials in the field, their strengths and weaknesses, their future prospects, appropriate analytical methods and testing, device applications and performance, emerging candidate materials as competitors and disruptive technologies, research and development, regulatory management, commercial aspects, and applications, including medical applications.”

In the preface to the collection, Dr. Ducheyne details how his team and Elsevier worked together to assure the continued high impact of the text by issuing it in both a print version and online via Elsevier’s Science Direct platform. He writes further, “It was the objective of the editorial team to compose the publication with chapters that would provide strategic insights for those working in diverse biomaterials applications, research and development, regulatory management, and industry.”