Clemson recognized for medical inventions.

Clemson University faculty and students will be recognized across the state during an InnoVision awards ceremony Tuesday for an orthopedic screw startup and COVID-19 microbead screening.

Aravis BioTech, a startup initiated by Jeffrey Anker of Clemson's College of Science, John DesJardins of the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences, and Dr. Caleb Behrend, an orthopedic surgeon, will be recognized as one of three finalists for the Innovision Technology Development Award for developing sensored screws used in orthopedic surgery to gauge the healing status of bone fractures.

It began when Anker and DesJardins met on a bus at the Marshall Space Flight Center in transit to a student NASA project in 2010, according to a news release.

First they collaborated to create an implant that would change color to indicated where a fracture is in the healing process.

Behrend, a friend of Anker's based in Arizona, suggested instead that the team could make the screw indicators detectable on an X-ray.

"Most Americans will break a couple of bones, on average, in their lifetime," Anker said in a news release. "If it's a bad break and you can't just put a cast on it, they need to put in hardware. That's where those screws come in."

For example, one in 10 Americans will break a hip, according to the release, and generally, doctors will repair the break by screwing the ball back into the...