News

TORL Represents at ORS

TORL has a strong showing at the Annual Meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society this year.  The meeting was held in San Diego on March 19-22.

Stephanie Cone presented her poster “Age-Specific Function of the ACL Bundles During Skeletal Growth in the Porcine Model.”  Paul delivered a fantastic oral presentation entitled “Guiding Collagenous Matrix Organization by Varying Strand Spacing in 3D Printed Scaffolds.”  Paul’s talk was also a finalist for an award given by the Meniscus Section of ORS.  Great job Stephanie and Paul!

 

TORL Outreach Activities: Spring

TORL participated in several outreach activities this spring.

 

  • Invite-a-Scientist: The Invite-a-Scientist program is put on by the North Carolina Science Festival. It pairs scientists with local middle schools, where they spend the day teaching students about their research and why they chose to become a scientist. We went out to Apex Middle School to teach the kids a bit about biomedical engineering.

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TORL Receives Pilot Funding for Musculoskeletal Simulation Research

TORL was awarded pilot project funding on musculoskeletal modeling through the National Center for Simulation in Rehabilitation Research (NCSRR).  The goal of the work is to develop and validate a new platform for modeling musculoskeletal growth and loading using a computational approach requiring joint simulation and finite element analysis.  The project also aims to develop software tools to link these computational programs.

The title of the project is “Integrated iterative musculoskeletal modeling to study growth and function” and represents an ongoing collaboration with Dr. Katherine Saul, an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at NC State.  Dr. Saul is director of the Movement Biomechanics Laboratory at NC State.  Dr. Saul and Dr. Fisher are co-PIs on the project. 

The announcement of the award can be found at the NCSRR website.

3D Printing Paper Accepted!

A paper from TORL on 3D printed scaffolds was recently accepted!

The paper, first authored by Paul Warren, describes how spaces within the scaffold influence the organization of new matrix made by cells.  This has implications for developing replacements for musculoskeletal tissues, which feature aligned matrix, such as the knee meniscus, ligaments, and tendons.

The paper, entitled “Engineering 3D-Bioplotted scaffolds to induce aligned extracellular matrix deposition for musculoskeletal soft tissue replacement“, was accepted to to Connective Tissue Research.  This project is a result of an ongoing collaboration with Dr. Rohan Shirwaiker in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering at NC State and Dr. Jeff Spang in the Department of Orthopeadics at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill.  Funding was provided by the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science and the North Carolina State University Comparative Medicine Institute.

Congrats All!

Link to article at journal website.

TORL a part of team awarded large-scale seed funding for 3D printing

Our lab was a member of a team awarded seed funding on 3D printing fibrous tissues through the Game-Changing Research Incentive Program (GRIP).  The title of the project is “3D Printing of Fibrous Tissue Engineered Medical Products: A New Paradigm for Tissue Biofabrication and Therapeutics” and involves collaborators in the College of Textiles, College of Engineering, and College of Veterinary Medicine at NC State as well as collaborators at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Funding of the project ($575,000 over three years) is provided by the NC State Office of Research, Innovation and Economic Development, RTI International and the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Sciences.

The full announcement of the award can be found here: https://news.ncsu.edu/2016/12/oried-announces-inaugural-grip-winners/

Hope Piercy wins BME Undergraduate Researcher of the Month

Hope Piercy, a BME senior in the lab, won the BME Undergraduate Researcher of the Month for November.  The citation reads, “Hope is receiving this award for her research in MRI-based modeling and prototype development in Dr. Fisher’s lab. Her research has previously been recognized with an Abram’s award and a poster award at the NCSU undergraduate research symposium.  Hope was presented the award at the Lucas Scholars presentations.  Congratulations Hope!

ORS Abstracts Accepted

TORL had several abstracts accepted for presentation at the 2017 ORS Annual Meeting in San Diego.  Paul Warren will be giving an oral presentation, while Stephanie Cone will be presenting a poster.  Matt is a co-author on an additional abstract.  Full listings of the abstracts are below.  Congrats to all!

 

Cone, S.G., Lambeth, E.P., Warren, P.W., Teeter, S.D., Piedrahita, J.A., Spang, J.T., Fisher, M.B.* Age-Specific Function of the ACL Bundles During Skeletal Growth in the Porcine Model. Annual Meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society, San Diego, CA, March 19-22, 2017. (Poster)

 

Warren, P.W., Huebner, P., Chester, D.A., Spang, J.T., Brown, A.C., Shirwaiker, R.A., Fisher, M.B.* Guiding Collagenous Matrix Organization by Varying Interstrand Spacing: Implications for Meniscus Tissue Engineering. Annual Meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society, San Diego, CA, March 19-22, 2017. (Podium)

 

Decker, R., Kim, M., Fisher, M.B., Seiber, B.N., Friedman, J., Sennett, M., Henning, E., Koyama, E., Mauck, R., Pacifici, M. A Novel Cell Source for Cartilage Repair. Annual Meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society, San Diego, CA, March 19-22, 2017. (Podium)