Dr. Roger Härtl, Dr. Lawrence Bonassar, and their inter-campus spine research team were awarded the Third Place Basic Science Research Paper Award at the annual meeting of the Cervical Spine Research Society (CSRS). The paper, “Total Disc Replacement Using Tissue-Engineered Intervertebral Discs: In Vivo Outcome In A Canine Model,” was authored by Dr. Härtl, Yu Moriguchi, Rodrigo Navarro, Peter Grunert, and Thamina Khair in New York and Dr. Lawrence Bonassar, Jorge Mojica Santiago, and Katherine Hudson in Ithaca. The annual meeting was held December 2-5, 2015, in San Diego.
The neurosurgery team in New York and biomechanical engineering team in Ithaca are long-time collaborators working on the development of biological tissue-engineered discs, which have the potential to replace degenerated intervertebral discs that cause back pain. The minimally invasive implanting of tissue-engineered discs instead could potentially regenerate a diseased segment of the spine, eliminating the need for open surgery.
