$8M Grant For Penn Medicine Achilles Tendon Research Center

Penn Medicine was awarded a five-year grant of nearly $8 million from the NIH to establish the Penn Achilles Tendinopathy Center of Research Translation. Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine have already been making cutting edge discoveries about tendinopathy etiology, and this grant will help continue and expand on the research. For example, Su Chin Heo, PhD, an assistant professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, and Melike Lakadamyali, PhD, an associate professor of Physiology, are studying how chromatin changes in tendinopathy. Researchers hope to find better ways to prevent and treat tendinopathy, including small molecule therapy and biologic treatments.

Louis J. Soslowsky, PhD, Fairhill Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, vice chair of Orthopaedic Research at Penn, and the founding director of the new center, says, "“Despite the high frequency and increasing prevalence of tendon injuries in young and old patients, effective treatment methods have stagnated over the last two decades. We believe that this stasis is due to the lack of fundamental understanding of tendon disease causes and progression, which limits development of novel treatments. Our goal is to develop new insight and technologies that uncover the mechanobiologic basis of Achilles injuries across many environments, ranging from the nucleus, to the cell, to the tissue microenvironment, and, finally, to patients as a whole.”

More information can be found at Penn Medicine News.