Regenerative Musculoskeletal Medicine Training Program

University Of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

Abstract The objective of this renewal application is to support years 16-20 of our current NIAMS T32, “Regenerative Musculoskeletal Medicine Training Program”, now in its 13th year. Under the astute guidance of our External Advisory Board (last meeting May 1,2024), the rationale for our T32 is to provide annually six (5 from the grant) multidisciplinary postdoctoral students with a two-year term of early career training in basic, translational and clinical research in order to produce the next generation of clinician and non-clinician scientists with specific expertise in the field of regenerative musculoskeletal science. We will employ a diverse, transdisciplinary training faculty of 48 scientists from >20 different departments in the UCLA Schools of Medicine, Engineering, Dentistry and College (undergraduate school at UCLA) with funded research programs and an established track record of teaching and mentoring; the past success of our trainees is boosted by the fact that all professional schools and the College and are located on a single campus in Westwood, permitting trainees “walking distance” access to the basic, translational and scientists in their “mentorship bubble”. Our T32 has garnered strong, ongoing commitments for support from the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA College, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, the Broad Stem Cell Research Center and California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Under the supervision the Internal Advisory Board and 10-member T32 Junior Faculty Council, trainees and mentors are evaluated annually with an objective, scorable, 360° survey of their joint career development progress. As our T32 has evolved we have adapted a number of key didactic and hands- on training vehicles that embrace the tenets of equity, diversity and inclusion, responsible conduct and rigor and reproducibility in research. Additional learning opportunities in translational orthopaedics, grant/manuscript writing, laboratory/project management through the use of LearnORS and the UCLA Clinical Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Training Program in Translational Science. More sophisticated statistics, AI-enhanced “big data” bioinformatics, especially in the areas of orthopaedic radiomics (a quantitative approach to medical imaging), applied engineering and stem cell science, have been added over the years. Of particular note has been the growth and development of our orthopaedic resident surgeon scientist program now in its 8th year. This NIAMS-sanctioned initiative has supported 15 orthopaedic surgeon residents and witnessed their matriculation to research intensive fellowship and faculty positions in academic departments of orthopaedic surgery. New with this year’s application, will be the launch of a pilot program of orthobiologics headlined by the recently awarded ARPA-H, “Novel Innovations for Tissue Regeneration in Osteoarthritis (NITRO)” program with investigators at Duke and Harvard, featuring translational preclinical and clinical science around a placebo-controlled trial of regenerative small molecules, developed in the Lyon’s lab to simultaneously repair cartilage and bone in human osteoarthritis of the knee.