Tendinopathy, tendon ruptures, and ligament injuries are common and debilitating musculoskeletal conditions. The urgency for improvement in diagnosis and treatment of these conditions results in a growing need for enhancement of tendon and ligament research. Increased research activity in this space resulted in a need to develop leadership, structures, and activities to define and stimulate this research community. The Tendon Research Section within the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) was formed to achieve this goal and high impact satellite conferences were organized for exchange of cutting edge findings in tendon research and as a key platform to foster the development of the tendon research community. One critical ORS Tendon Section goal that was identified is the need to develop guidelines or even standards for specific aspects of tendon and ligament research to increase scientific rigor and reproducibility in the field. Therefore, we will focus the proposed ORS Tendon Section satellite meeting on recent advancements and, most importantly, to define guidelines for conducting research in our field. These topic areas were identified by the PIs of the proposal and the tendon section leadership. Therefore, discussions on specific topics will be stimulated with breakout sessions and hands-on demonstrations. Through these discussions, we will establish guidelines for these focus areas. We will then publish these guidelines in a special issue of the Journal of Orthopaedic Research to direct the field moving forward. In addition to these guideline discussions, we will include scientific podium and poster sessions for trainees to present their research, mentoring sessions for the trainees to interact with PIs, and a discussion of future ORS Tendon Section goals. We anticipate that this meeting will have a lasting effect on the tendon and ligament field by promoting rigor and reproducibility in our research and cultivating new collaborations.
Tendinopathy, tendon ruptures, and ligament injuries are common and debilitating musculoskeletal conditions. This proposal is for a multiday meeting sponsored by the ORS Tendon Research Section to provide a forum to present and discuss the latest research, to compare gold-standard preclinical models to their clinical counterparts, to mentor trainees and junior PIs, and to discuss and establish guidelines for future research to advance the rigor and reproducibility of the field.
