Louis C. Gerstenfeld, Ph.D. Receives ORS Lifetime Achievement Award

Louis C. Gerstenfeld, Ph.D., professor of orthopaedic surgery at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), is the first-ever recipient of the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) International Section of Fracture Repair (ISFR) Lifetime Achievement Award.

According to his nominators, Dr. Gerstenfeld “exemplifies the spirit of this award through his career with pioneering cross-disciplinary collaborations to accelerate scientific discovery, applying cutting edge technologies resulting in some of the first ‘omics’ data for fracture healing, continued volunteering on various committees and for his strong record of mentoring and training the next generation of bone researchers.”

Dr. Gerstenfeld’s research laboratory was among the first in the nation “to develop in vitro osteoblast culture models and to isolate the proteins and cDNA clones of the extracellular matrix proteins that are uniquely expressed by these cells.” He and his team have worked on “the effects of weightlessness in bone cells on the first NASA/NIH National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases joint project experimentation space shuttle launches in April 1994 and February 1995.” Dr. Gerstenfeld has also shared his expertise on review panels for NIH, NASA and Department of Defense for orthopedic-related research and worked on Special Emphasis Review Panels for the FDA.

Describing an example of one his cross-disciplinary collaborations, Dr. Gerstenfeld told OTW, “In our human study on fracture healing, we are collecting data from a specific patient cohort that will break a part of their arm, the humerus. This is not usually treated with surgical repair because the broken humerus is put into a cast or sling so it’s the simplest kind of fracture repair to study. When the patient comes back to get an X-ray, we take a blood sample. We then analyze the blood sample to find serum markers in healing and non-healing patients.”

“This is a study in collaboration with Dr. Demissie at the School of Public Health and co-directed by Dr. Paul Tornetta, Chairman of Orthopedic Surgery, through a collaboration with the Major Extremity Trauma Research Consortium, a network of clinical centers and trauma hospitals originally funded by the Department of Defense that is tasked with developing an understanding of best practices and new therapies to promote skeletal healing after injury. Dr. Tornetta has been involved with the Major Extremity Trauma Research Consortium since its beginning and is a leading researcher in human fracture healing. This is the first study that is looking at both outcomes and treatments, that is a biological based study, trying to figure out biologic factors associated with in bone healing.”

Finally, as he contemplated this remarkable and very public recognition from his peers, Dr. Gerstenfeld said, “Having worked my whole professional career in orthopedics research and having made the Orthopaedics Research Society my professional home, receiving this award has been one of my greatest honors. It has also been an immense pleasure to work with the orthopedic surgical community whose whole motivation is to achieve excellent technical outcomes, so to be able to contribute to the improvement of their ability to produces better surgical outcomes is very meaningful to me.”