Lawrence J. Bonassar, Ph.D. Receives Kappa Delta Award

Lawrence J. Bonassar, Ph.D., the Daljit S. and Elaine Sarkaria professor at the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering and Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University in New York, has been honored with the 2022 Kappa Delta Anne Doner Vaughn Award.

Dr. Bonassar was given this award by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in recognition of his work on the microscale mechanics and composition of articular cartilage and their relevance to musculoskeletal disease.

Dr. Bonassar told OTW, “The Kappa Delta Award is personally very meaningful to me. I have worked in the field of orthopedic research for more than 30 years—since I was a graduate student. I’ve attended dozens of Kappa Delta talks at the ORS [Orthopaedic Research Society] meeting and I understand that this is a rare honor. As an engineer, it is particularly meaningful for me—only a handful of engineers have won such awards, and having my work acknowledged as being highly impactful, particularly by clinical colleagues, is very gratifying for me.”

“We built a device that fits on a fast-imaging microscope that allowed us to deliver controlled amounts of energy to pieces of cartilage—the same impact a person might experience in an ACL [anterior cruciate ligament] or meniscus tear or a car accident,” said Dr. Bonassar.

“By capturing images at milliseconds, we observed in real time how the tissue deforms and what happens to the cells in the regions that experienced different amounts of deformation. We discovered that the damage to the cells is directly related to how much strain the tissue experiences and is concentrated in the area of impact. For example, in a matter of minutes following an ACL tear, the chondrocytes, particularly in that top 100μ, are damaged in a very specific way, in that their mitochondria are less efficient at doing their job.”

When OTW asked for details on how the mechanics of growth plates occur from the columnar arrangement of cells, Dr. Bonassar explained, “Our observations about the mechanics of the growth plate were among the most surprising that we have made over the past decade. The field is well aware that the columnar structure of growth plate is critical for achieving longitudinal bone growth. But the idea that this columnar structure had important mechanical implications had never been explored. We discovered that these columns of cells slide past each other when the tissue is loaded, meaning that the part of the tissue that connects the columns is much less stiff than the columns themselves. This could give new, important insights on how growth plate fractures occur and on how to treat them.”

“This award is really an interdisciplinary effort. As an engineer, the opportunity to work with a physicist (Dr. Cohen) and two veterinarians (Drs. Delco and Fortier) has driven our work into new, important directions that would never have been achieved by any of us on our own.”