Caption: Gabrielle Lorenz (left) holds the pink hydrogel with Juan Taboas (right).
By Phoebe Ingraham Renda
Photography by Rayni Shiring, University of Pittsburgh
When asked to explain how his bone-healing hydrogel works, Juan Taboas, associate professor of oral and craniofacial sciences, School of Dental Medicine, and associate professor of biomedical engineering, Swanson School of Engineering, started with a movie.
“Ever seen ‘Minority Report?’” Taboas asked with a smile while recalling the scene in the 2002 Tom Cruise film where eyeballs roll across the floor and get dunked in sterilizing juice before being transplanted. “That’s what we tried to make.”
The bright pink hydrogel, developed by Taboas and bioengineering PhD candidate Gabrielle Lorenz, is like that juice, but for bones.
Caption: Gabrielle Lorenz pipettes the pink antimicrobial hydrogel.
The project stemmed from Taboas’ work on injured growth plates in children, where he first developed a hydrogel for bone repair. Realizing that the military has a critical need for bone repair due to blast injuries, Taboas secured a $1.7 million U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) grant in 2016 to expand the hydrogel’s utility.
Because blast injuries are so prone to infection before treatment can be administered, the bone‑healing hydrogel needed broad‑spectrum antimicrobial properties. Current treatments rely heavily on traditional antibiotics, but those drugs are in a constant arms race against evolving bacteria and can contribute to antibiotic‑resistant infections.
“That's where we hit upon nitric oxide as a therapeutic, because we are simply co-opting what your body already does when you have a bacterial infection,” says Taboas.
In response to an infection, immune cells, called neutrophils, are recruited to the infection site and secrete radical species, including nitric oxide and superoxide—highly reactive gases that degrade bacterial proteins and disrupt their biochemical pathways. These radical gases react with each other and other chemicals in the wound to yield additional reactive oxygen and reactive nitrogen species.
“We went with nitric oxide because we felt it was more biocompatible, and it has no known bacterial resistance,” says Taboas. “In addition, we felt it could enhance healing at the same time because it has a potential for synergizing with cell pathways that help improve regeneration.”
In 2021, Taboas secured a $700,000 DOD grant to develop a prototype therapeutic in collaboration with colleagues at Pitt, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Zylö Therapeutics.
After refining their bone-healing, antimicrobial formula into a deliverable hydrogel and testing it, they discovered an unexpected level of bone regeneration. When the hydrogel, which contains microparticles that deliver nitric oxide and transforming growth factor beta 1, was applied to a bone injury, the synergy between the two components accelerated bone regeneration in fractures while reducing infection. Additionally, the hydrogel is shelf-stable and can be applied as a gel or injected directly into the injury, making its use extremely practical for first responders in conflict or disaster zones, paramedics and military personnel providing buddy care on the battlefield.
“With a product such as this, the goal is to enable anyone in an austere environment—where access to medical care is limited—to apply it to stop infection early and promote regeneration,” says Lorenz.
Taboas and Lorenz filed a provisional patent in January 2025 and are now working on the next steps to translate the technology for human use.