Gullbrand Lab Attends PSRS 2025 and Matthew Fainor Wins 2nd Best Podium Presentation
November 07, 2025
The Gullbrand Lab journeyed to the University of Delaware today to present at the 2025 Philadelphia Spine Research Symposium. Dr. Harvey Smith kicked off the last session of the day "Bench to Bedside - Translational Spine Research" with his keynote detailing the progress we've made developing the eDAPS total intervertebral disc replacement and TARPS annular patch therapies. PhD student Matthew Fainor presented his research project "IL-1 Does Not Exacerbate Cell Death in a Large-Scale Tissue-Engineered Intervertebral Disc" for which he won second best podium presentation. Janai Augustin and Brianna Orozco also presented their research during the poster session. A big thank you to Dr. Gullbrand for co-organizing this year's event alongside our longtime collaborator Dr. Tom Schaer!
Dr. Gullbrand, Brianna Orozco, and Janai Augustin present at Albert Einstein
October 22, 2025
The Albert Einstein College of Medicine invited Dr. Sarah Gullbrand to present some of our lab's work at the 14th Annual Musculoskeletal Repair and Regeneration Symposium alongside our collaborator Robby Bowles in a session dedicated to intervertebral disc degeneration and therapies. Master's student Brianna Orozco and PhD student Janai Augustin also attended and presented their research at the poster session characterizing the intricate relationships between intervertebral disc degeneration and adjacent tissue remodeling.
Gullbrand Lab Receives NIH R01 Grant
October 01, 2025
Congratulations to Dr. Sarah Gullbrand for earning a competitive R01 grant award from the National Institutes of Health. This newest award, entitled "Accelerating Annulus Fibrosus Repair with a Multi-Factor Mechanoactive Patch," builds upon our long-time collaboration with research scientist Dr. Robert Mauck, surgeon-scientist Dr. Harvey Smith, and their teams to continue the development and testing of an innovative biomaterial patch that controllably releases therapeutic small molecules for improved repair of intervertebral disc herniations.
Congratulations to Sage Frehner and Matthew Fainor on Tissue Engineering Publication
September 09, 2025
Congratulations to co-first authors Sage Frehner and Matthew Fainor as well as their coauthors for the newly published paper "A Human Progenitor Cell-Based Tissue Engineered Disc" published in Tissue Engineering Part A today! This publication is the first from our ongoing collaboration with DiscGenics, assessing the feasibility of implementing DiscGenics' proprietary Discogenic Cells in our tissue-engineered endplate-modified disc-like angle ply structures (eDAPS).
Thank You to Our Summer Students, Lauren Maghak and Alex Baranyai
August 26, 2025
As the summer once again draws to a close, we'd like to thank our exceptional summer students! A big thank you to Lauren Maghak and good luck on her return to veterinary school after a summer spent working in our lab through the University of Pennsylvania, School of Veterinary Medicine Boehringer-Ingelheim Veterinary Scholars Program. We'd also like to extend an extraordinary thank you to Alex Baranyai, our incredible undergraduate student who will continue in the lab as she returns to classes this fall.