At the beginning of February, second-year College of Medicine students Mark Obri, Matthew DeSanto, Omar Azem and Alexander Miller packed their bags and headed to Austin, Texas, for the 2019 Orthopaedic Research Society Annual Meeting.
While attending the conference, the group presented their research, led by Fayez Safadi, Ph.D., director of NEOMED’s musculoskeletal research focus area and professor of anatomy and neurobiology, on developing different treatments to make bone healing faster. The presentation was titled Osteoactivin and Bone Morphogenetic Protein-2 on Bone and Soft Tissue in a Rat Spinal Fusion Model.
“For example, if someone has a surgery or breaks a bone, different treatments are used to heal the bones in the patient. Our research is trying to use a new type of treatment (Osteoactivin) to heal patients faster and have less side effects. It worked on mice, rats, and sheep, and now the hope is to test it on humans,” says Obri.
Obri, DeSanto, Azem and Miller have worked under the mentorship of Dr. Safadi for two years now.
“I’m proud of our NEOMED medicine students that presented research conducted at the University. They’ve been working very hard for two years and are very dedicated young individuals. These four will be co-authors on the publication that will be submitted to an orthopaedic journal,” says Dr. Safadi.