Voice of the President #3
Hello fellow ICRS members! Winter is finally almost over as we look toward Spring and new beginnings. As I look back on the incredibly collaborative international group of our members, I am struck by their ability to work together regardless of nationality as they are bound by their dedication to our field of cartilage repair, regeneration and joint preservation. This is especially important considering current world events, and I value our kinship in these times.
The ICRS has been quite busy on several fronts, and I would be remiss in not giving out kudos to several of our members and their contributions. First and by no means in order of importance I would like to thank Emmanuel Papacostas for running the Surgical Skills Course in Doha, Qatar in February. This was a highly successful event bringing surgeons from all over the world to Aspetar and getting hands on skills built for performing the important procedures of cartilage preservation. In a similar fashion we saw Moises Cohen and team and our own Stephan Seiler put together an impressive World Series in Sao Paulo, Brazil which was equally well attended internationally and according to reviews was a fully packed audience from start to finish indicating that the program was scintillating, so congrats to Dr. Cohen and Stephan for a job well done!
The ICRS was in San Diego for the AAOS annual meeting, and our executive director Anneke Hibbel manned the booth and many of our members stopped by to visit while attending the meeting. Additionally, many of our members including a significant number of our past presidents were there in full force for the combined Biologic Association/AAOS session on orthobiologics, which played to a packed standing room only audience.
Other kudos belong to our past president Daniel Saris who won the first AAOS Arnold Caplan Award in honor of our late dear friend who contributed so much to our field and was a shining light of a scientist. Although the deed of gift only allows one recipient, I would be remiss if not acknowledging the tremendous contribution of Lucienne Vonk, Ph.D. who together with Daniel as a team was instrumental in the success of the IMPACT study. It is a well-known fact that when clinicians work with basic scientists, breakthroughs are made.
I want to also acknowledge the generous contribution of Dr. Sachdev who is supporting the ICRS Sachdev Translational Innovation Fellowship in the New York metro area in early June. We are also for the first time sponsoring the ¨30 under 30¨ scholarship to support young members for travel to our world congress which will be instrumental in helping bring in the next class of next-gen members.
Most importantly we need your support for our journal: JCJP. We need to continue to get an impact factor and increase readership so please submit an article. This is incredibly important and we can all make a difference. Remember also that we need high quality papers and most of us have some manuscripts yet to be submitted so support Rachel Frank and Lucienne Vonk in this endeavor.
Upcoming events of course is our 18th ICRS World Congress this October in Boston, USA, I look forward to seeing everyone there and the abstract submission notice just went out so get ready to enjoy a great time in a great city. I am also working with both the education and translational committee members to put together my Summit meeting in 2026, which will be in Portugal either in Lisbon or Porto still to be determined. That is all for now and everyone please be safe and continue preserving cartilage!
Daniel A. Grande, Ph.D.
