Martha Murray, MD, FAAOS, receives 2022 OREF Clinical Research Award
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The 2022 Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation Clinical Research Award was presented to Martha Murray, MD, FAAOS, for research related to musculoskeletal disease or injury, according to a press release.
Murray is the orthopedic surgeon-in-chief at the Orthopedic Center at Boston Children's Hospital and professor of orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School. Her work studying techniques to repair the ACL after a tear led to the FDA de novo 510(k) of the bridge-enhanced ACL restoration (BEAR) implant, the first implant to stimulate ACL healing, according to the release.
Murray and her colleagues utilized an extracellular matrix material that could be manufactured into a porous implant that serves as a substitute scaffold and absorbs and holds the blood in the ACL tear site. Two years postoperatively, the BEAR implant produced equivalent or better outcomes compared with ACL reconstruction, according to the press release.
When Murray accepted the award at the Orthopaedic Research Society Annual Meeting, she said, “ACL healing may be possible if we can ameliorate the environment that the ACL finds itself in after it’s injured. We did this by using a hydrophilic implant loaded with autologous blood from the patient. A 100-patient randomized controlled trial of this technique demonstrated improved performance of BEAR for early outcomes at 6 months and a year and noninferior patient-reported outcomes in knee laxity compared to ACL reconstruction at 2 years out from surgery. Our plan now in the future is to continue to collect data on this novel alternative for ACL injury.”
Murray and her collaborators previously won the Kappa Delta Ann Doner Vaughn Award in 2013 for preclinical data that lead to the BEAR implant.
“Any time you take a graft from another part of the body, that graft site can be painful and then the knee still doesn't feel quite right,” Murray said in the release. “With the BEAR implant, patients felt their knee return to normal more quickly. By doing a double-blinded, randomized controlled trial, orthopedic surgeons now have a better understanding of the outcomes they can expect for their patients. These data will help surgeons and patients make an informed decision on what procedure is right for them.”
Editor's Note: This article was updated on Feb. 9, 2022 with additional quotes from Murray's acceptance speech at the Orthopaedic Research Society Annual Meeting.
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