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TAMPA — Her boyfriend suffered a nasty cut between his thumb and forefinger, where a traditional bandage wouldn’t hold. Kerriann Greenhalgh fretted, especially when her beau ended up with a staph infection that required surgery.

“That was a very traumatic thing to go through just from a small cut that should have been able to be protected from infection,” she said. “There just wasn’t anything out there that did that.”

Fast-forward a year or so when the University of South Florida grad student in organic chemistry was noodling around with a nanoparticle drug delivery system and came upon a polymer that had properties that mirrored those of human skin.

“The two just kind of clicked together for me,” Greenhalgh said. “I thought this would make a really neat, effective second-skin product.”

Today, her KeriCure liquid bandage product is in 900 Publix and 200 Kroger stores. She’s lobbying for its use in post-surgical settings and dermatology. (And the long-since-recovered boyfriend is now her husband and father of their 13-month-old son.)

By Jerome R. Stockfisch | Tribune Staff Jerome R. Stockfisch on Google+
Published: December 21, 2013

 

Kerriann Greenhalgh created the KeriCure liquid bandage and is lobbying for its use in post-surgical settings and dermatology. KERRIANN GREENHALGH/KERICURE

Kerriann Greenhalgh created the KeriCure liquid bandage and is lobbying for its use in post-surgical settings and dermatology. KERRIANN GREENHALGH/KERICURE