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BME Assistant Professor Mark Buckley has received an NIH R03 grant for the project entitled "Tracking Achilles tendon compression to monitor insertional Achilles tendinopathy." Insertional Achilles tendinopathy (IAT) is a painful and common disorder that is difficult to treat. Standard physical therapy interventions that work well for other forms of Achilles tendinopathy are only ~50% effective for IAT, and patients who fail physical therapy require surgeries that are expensive, entail long recovery times and often lead to complications.

The Buckley's lab research will define a critical threshold for damaging compression in the Achilles tendon that will inform targeted orthotics, exercises and/or surgical strategies aimed at treating this disease. The results of this research may also lead to the development of an inexpensive and noninvasive tool which would enable monitoring of treatments to improve patients with IAT.

Department of Biomedical Engineering Assistant Professor Mark Buckley was awarded a pilot grant from the University of Rochester Core Center for Musculoskeletal Biology and Medicine (URCCMBM) for his research in collaboration with A. Samuel Flemister from the Department of Orthopaedics and Mike Richards from the Department of Surgery. This grant will support their research to improve treatment for insertional Achilles tendinopathy (IAT), a common and painful disease that resists standard forms of non-operative care.

The URCCMBM provides shared facilities and services to groups of established, currently funded investigators addressing scientific problems in musculoskeletal biology and medicine, in order to improve efficiency, accelerate the pace of research, and ensure greater productivity.