Robert L. Mauck, PhD, an associate professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of four scientists given awards by the Kappa Delta Sorority and the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in Las Vegas. Awardees are chosen for their outstanding basic science and clinical research related to musculoskeletal disease or injury, with the ultimate goal of advancing patient treatment and care. Each award carries a $20,000 stipend.

Mauck received the 2015 Kappa Delta Young Investigator Award for his research on developing and optimizing nanofibrous scaffolds -- extremely small, bioengineered materials -- to repair or replace complex connective tissues, such as those that make up the meniscus of the knee joint or the intervertebral disc of the spinal column. 

“This is quite an honor, given the number of fantastic scientists and research teams that have won this award in the past,” said Mauck. “It is really a reflection of many years of hard work by all of the great people who have worked with me over to develop novel regenerative approaches to solve the difficult problem of dense connective tissue repair.”

Complex connective tissues do not heal well, primarily because of their dense makeup with few cells and blood vessels. The challenge, says Mauck, a researcher at the McKay Orthopaedic Research Laboratory, is to find or create a regenerative treatment to restore the fiber arrangement of the tissue and the mechanical integrity of the structure.

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