Principal Investigator

Hani A. Awad, Ph.D. University of Rochester work Box 665 601 Elmwood Ave Rochester NY 14642 office: MC 1-8543 p 585-273-5268 f 585-273-4746 Hani_Awad@urmc.rochester.edu

Honors & News

May 9, 2013

Jason Inzana Wins 2013 Alice L. Jee Award

Jason Inzana, Ph.D. candidate in Professor Hani Awad's Musculoskeletal Tissue Engineering laboratory, has been selected as one of the recipients of the 2013 Alice L. Jee Young Investigator Award. For winning this award, Jason will have the honor of an invited presentation of a poster entitled Skeletally Immature Mice are More Susceptible than Mature Mice to the Detrimental Effects of High Fat Diet on Cancellous Bone in the Distal Femur at the 42^nd International Sun Valley Workshop poster session in Sun Valley, Idaho, in August 2013.
March 15, 2013

URMC Orthopaedics Ranks No. 1 in Nation in NIH Funding

The University of Rochester Medical Center's Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation has been ranked No. 1 in the nation in National Institutes of Health funding for orthopaedic research, according to data released by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research.
The URMC Center for Musculoskeletal Research (CMSR) received $4.86 million in peer-reviewed NIH research grants in 2012, surpassing institutions such as Washington University, Johns Hopkins and Duke University. At a time when research dollars are becoming increasingly scarce, the CMSR upped its funding by 30 percent over the previous year.
This is a testament to the caliber of URMC's orthopaedic research endeavors and our stellar class of investigators, said Edward M. Schwarz, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Musculoskeletal Research and the Burton Distinguished Professor of Orthopaedics. Our funding success is due in large part to a programmatic organizational design, a strong emphasis on collaboration across departments, and the diverse research interests of our faculty. It is clearly a case of the sum being greater than its parts.
Among the seven orthopaedic researchers that made the 2012 Blue Ridge list for top funding were Dr. Schwarz (4^th) and Dr. Hani Awad (67^th), both also have appointments in Biomedical Engineering.
March 6, 2013

Hani Awad receives an Established Investigator grant from the MTF

Hani Awad, Ph.D., has received a 3-year, $300,000 grant from the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation (MTF) for an Established Investigator research project entitled Teriparatide and Allograft Cartilage Derived Matrix for Regenerative Repair of Articular Cartilage. The funded preclinical study will investigate the hypothesis that parathyroid hormone (PTH) therapy can enhance repair of knee cartilage defects grafted with a novel cartilage allograft derived matrix (CDM) compared to standard surgical methods currently in clinical practice. For more information please visit the Awad Lab.
January 27, 2013

URMC Orthopaedics Research Student Wins National Video Contest

Youssef Farhat, a BME MD/PhD student in the Awad Lab, has won first place in the Orthopaedic Research Society Video Outreach Competition for his 3-minute video raising awareness of Orthopaedic research in a way that is enjoyable and easy to understand.

His video was the only entry from the University of Rochester. Winners were determined by vote of members of the ORS. Youssef's own research is aimed at reducing or eliminating scar tissue in hands. But in his film Who Cares About Orthopaedic Research?, Farhat explains that orthopaedic conditions like fractures, arthritis, back pain, and cancer, have an impact on nearly everyone at some point from birth to old age. He works in the Center for Musculoskeletal Research at the UR Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, and is pursuing a doctorate in biomedical engineering in the lab of Hani A. Awad, Ph.D.
May 17, 2012

BME/ChE Professors Receive Provost Multidisciplinary Award

Professor Hani Awad (BME) in collaboration with professor Matthew Yates (ChE) received one of the 2012 Provost's Multidisciplinary Awards for their collaborative project entitled Coating of Titanium Implants with Electrically Polarized Hydroxyapatite to Enhance Bone Integration.
March 30, 2012

BME & ChE Students Awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowships

Two current BME and Chemical Engineering students and a BME alumna have received prestigious National Science Foundation Research Fellowships. BME graduate student, Jason Inzana (Awad Lab), Michael Baranello, a Chemical Engineering Ph.D. student in the Benoit Lab, and Molly Boutin, an alumnus of the Benoit lab (undergraduate research assistant), were among those who received the fellowships.

Selection for these awards is based on the students' outstanding abilities and accomplishments, as well as their potential to contribute to strengthening the vitality of the US science and engineering enterprise. The fellowship, which is part of a federally sponsored program, provides three years of graduate study support for students pursing doctoral degrees. The fellowship includes a three-year annual stipend of $30,000, a $10,500 educational allowance to the institution, and international research opportunities.
September 21, 2011

URMC Research Could Extend Life of Arthritic Joints

A medication already approved to build bone mass in patients with osteoporosis also builds cartilage around joints and could potentially be repurposed to treat millions of people suffering from arthritis, according to orthopaedic researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

The study authors hope their laboratory findings, published in the current issue of Science Translational Medicine, will set the stage for the first human clinical trials to test human parathyroid hormone (brand name: Forteo) in this growing patient population.

Among many collaborators, on this article, from the University of Rochester Medical Center were Drs. Edward M. Schwarz, Ph.D. and Hani Awad, Ph.D.
July 12, 2010

Associate Professors Andrew Berger and Hani Awad Receive Provost's Multidisciplinary Award

Associate Professors Andrew Berger (Optics) and Hani Awad (BME) were among the recipients of a 2010-2011 Provost Multidisciplinary Award (PMA) for a study entitled Noninvasive optical monitoring of bone degradation in a mouse model of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This study will develop a noninvasive optical method of measuring bone fragility in genetically modified mice developing severe RA as they receive both anti-inflammatory medication and complementary drugs that try to preserve bone health. By providing a better way of tracking bone fragility in living animals, this work will generate new understanding of how bone disorders develop and how medicines can treat them more effectively in both animals and humans.
September 12, 2009

Preventing Injuries from Causing Long-term Osteoarthritis

An existing osteoporosis drug is the first ever found to prevent cartilage loss from osteoarthritis following injury to a joint, and may also regenerate some cartilage that has been lost to osteoarthritis, according to an early study presented today at the annual meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research in Denver. While the study was in mice, the model closely mimics human osteoarthritis that develops following knee injuries, according to the study authors.
June 18, 2009

Dr. Awad Receives a NIH Grant Award

Dr. Hani Awad has received funding from the NIH to support a 5 year study that seeks to develop a tissue engineering-based solution to debilitating adhesions that are frequently encountered with flexor tendon reconstructive surgery. The funded research will evaluate the interplay between pro- and anti-scarring factors to identify therapeutic targets for this problem. The studies will also investigate the efficacy of using allografts and gene therapy in eradicating adhesions and restoring the joint's range of motion. The new grant will expand this area of research, which has been previously funded by grants from the Orthopaedic Research Education Foundation (OREF) and the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation (MTF).
March 18, 2009

URMC Scientists Awarded $6.8 Million in Stem Cell Research Grants

Stem Cells

Ten scientists from the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) have been awarded more than $6.8 million by the Empire State Stem Cell Board. The grants are for a wide range of research programs in the fields of neurological disorders, cancer, musculoskeletal diseases, the blood system, and efforts to understand the fundamental mechanics of stem cell biology.

Stem cell research for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine is a rapidly evolving field that holds great promise for the 21^st century. Drs. Hani Awad, Laura Calvi, Edward Puzas, Edward Schwarz, Xinping Zhang, Dirk Bohmann, James Palis, Richard Waugh and others have obtained funding for stem cell research to further their efforts in this area that include: understanding the molecular genetic characteristic of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), how to expand MSCs in vitro and in vivo, methods to impregnate matrices with MSCs to tissue engineer bone and cartilage, and how to image labeled MSCs.
February 25, 2009

Tony Chen Presents Two Papers at the 55^th Annual Meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society
Tony Chen, Ph.D. candidate, presenting at the Orthopaedic Research Society Meeting.

Tony Chen, Ph.D. Candidate, presented two papers at the 55^th Annual Meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society in Las Vegas, NV (February 22 - 25, 2009). The papers he presented were:
- Chen T, Jeffries R, Zuscik M, Awad H. Anabolic Effects of TGF-beta1 and Low Oxygen on Bioreactor-Cultivated Tissue Engineered Cartilage, and
- Chen T, Zuscik M, Awad H. Interstitial Flow Produces a Superficial Zone-Like Layer in Tissue Engineered Cartilage.
June 29, 2008

Laura Yanoso Scholl wins Award at the SBC 2008 meeting

Laura Yanoso Scholl presenting her poster at the Summer Bioengineering Conference.

Laura Yanoso Scholl won the First Prize in the MS Student Poster Competition at the Summer Bioengineering Conference (June 25-29, 2008), Marco Island, FL, for her paper and poster entitled Evaluation of Poly-Lactic Acid/Beta-Ticalcium Phosphate Scaffolds as Segmental Bone Graft Substitutes.
June 16, 2007

David Reynolds Wins Award at the 2007 TERMIS Meeting

David Reynolds and Dr. Awad after winning the Ph.D. Student Competition.

David Reynolds won First Prize in the Ph.D. student competition at the Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS) meeting in Toronto (June 13-16, 2007) for his paper and poster entitled Novel Measurement of Bone Graft-to-Host Union Using CT Imaging: Implications for Biomechanical Strength. David competed with 250 student applicants and along with the honor of placing first he won a $1,000 cash prize.
April 1, 2007

Hani Awad wins the 2007 Kappa Delta Ann Doner Vaughn Award

2007 Kappa Delta Ann Doner Vaughn Award winners (Dr. Awad is second from left).

BME Assistant Professor Hani Awad received this award, along with the research group from his alma mater led by Dr. David Butler. The team was recognized for their research and manuscript on Functional Tissue Engineering for Tendon Repair: A Multidisciplinary Strategy Using Mesenchymal Stem Cells, Bioscaffolds and Mechanical Stimulation. This is the highest research award given by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS).