Wang and Donahue receive collaborative grant to study bone healing

Dr. Henry Donahue (left) and Yong Wang (right)

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Yong Wang, associate professor of biomedical engineering in the Penn State College of Engineering, and Henry Donahue, professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, have received one of two Grace Woodward Grants for Collaborative Research in Engineering and Medicine.

The research award is intended to support projects that create or capitalize on opportunities to use engineering in the life sciences and medicine.

Wang and Donahue have received $50,000 for their project, “Hydrogel Composites for Segmental Bone Defect Healing.”

The research aims to create an innovative biomaterial that can release growth factors on demand, promoting bone growth over time. “There is currently no other product like ours on the market,” said Wang.

In the two-step research process, synthesis and characterization of the biomaterials will be performed at University Park, while the in vivo transplantation and evaluation will be conducted at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center.

The research duo met in 2013 shortly after Wang joined the biomedical engineering department. “I visited many labs and quickly realized that Dr. Donahue and I have many similar research interests,” Wang stated. “We have been working on collaborative proposals since that time.”

The Grace Woodward Grants for Collaborative Research in Engineering and Medicine are given annually by the Penn State Colleges of Engineering and Medicine, and are made possible by the support of endowments from the estate of Grace Woodward, a long time friend and supporter of the University. The program is designed to encourage genuine collaborations between engineers and clinicians or biomedical scientists that involve either new avenues of research or the feasibility testing of new medical devices, instrumentation or other diagnostic or therapeutic modalities.