PHILADELPHIA — The Penn Center for Musculoskeletal Disorders in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania was awarded a five-year, $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue its research on musculoskeletal injury and repair.
Louis J. Soslowsky, PhD
The Center conducts investigations in many areas of musculoskeletal biology and medicine: bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and discs. The funding will support research aimed at improving the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of conditions such as osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, low back pain, and rotator cuff tears.
Penn is one of only five institutions nationally to receive funding for a Musculoskeletal Center and is already the longest running of these Centers nationally. The Penn Center began its NIH funding in 2006.
According to the NIH review panel, the Center features “a strong leadership team and well-organized administrative structure; state-of-the-art technologies, and an exceptional education and enrichment program. Furthermore, the reviewers consider the overall environment and the institutional commitment to be outstanding.” Additionally, they cite the “high level of success in operation and productivity of the existing center over the past 10 years.” It concluded that “this is an exceptional application with high impact to the field of musculoskeletal research.”
“We are grateful to the NIH and the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases Special Emphasis Panel for this important funding,” said Louis J. Soslowsky, PhD, the Fairhill Professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and founding director of Penn’s Center. “Whether through injury, work, sports, or intrinsic bodily features, millions of Americans are affected by musculoskeletal disorders. The resulting pain and reduction in quality of life affect families, friends, and co-workers, as well as the sufferers themselves. These trends will grow as the baby-boom generation ages and people live longer with chronic conditions. The Center brings together Penn’s globally recognized experts to expand our research and understanding of these debilitating afflictions."
Penn’s Musculoskeletal Center will provide funds for three cores of musculoskeletal research:
- Micro–computed Tomography Imaging Core, which offers a wide range of imaging approaches to evaluate musculoskeletal tissue injury and repair. (Micro-CT is akin to three-dimensional x-ray imaging on a small scale with extremely increased resolution.)
- Biomechanics Core,whichdevelops and provides a large array of biomechanical approaches to evaluate musculoskeletal tissue injury and repair.
- Histology Core, which uses and develops a wide range of approaches for the microscopic study of the structure, composition, and function of tissues and bones.
In addition to Soslowsky, other Penn investigators participating in the grant include the Center’s associate director, Maurizio Pacifici, PhD; Felix Wehrli, PhD and X. Sherry Liu, PhD, director and associate director of the micro-CT Imaging Core; Robert L Mauck, PhD, director of the Biomechanics Core; and Robert Pignolo, MD, PhD, director of the Histology Core. The Center itself has 128 faculty members, 112 from five Penn schools (Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, Dental Medicine, Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Arts and Sciences) and 16 from local institutions.
"This new funding will allow the rich collaborations that have been occurring at the Center over its ten-year history to expand and flourish," Soslowsky said. “We will continue to work diligently on behalf of the many millions of people worldwide with musculoskeletal disorders.”
The new round of funding for the Center was provided by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (1 P30 AR069619).
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.