Farshid Guilak, the Mildred B. Simon Research Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and co-director of the Washington University Center for Regenerative Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine and professor of biomedical engineering and of mechanical engineering & materials science in the McKelvey School of Engineering, has been elected this year as a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). The role of the National Academies is to advise the nation on issues of engineering, health care, and biomedical science and technology. Election into the National Academies (NASEM) is considered one of the highest possible honors in science, engineering, and medicine, but Guilak’s election into 3 National Academies in one year is unprecedented.
Election to the NAE recognizes those who have made outstanding contributions to the field of engineering. Election to the NAM recognizes an individual’s major impact on the field of medicine and clinical care, while election to the NAI is the highest honor given to academic inventors for success in entrepreneurship and translation of research to commercialization. Guilak was honored for his research involving the treatment of arthritic joints. His work has focused on uncovering factors that contribute to the onset and progression of arthritis, with a focus on developing new drugs and stem cell therapies to treat various forms of the disease. His team has worked to develop techniques to grow cartilage from patients’ donor cells to eventually create a living joint replacement to treat arthritis. He spent decades years working with collaborators to develop the method in which cartilage cells are seeded onto a scaffold to treat arthritis of the hip. With collaborators, Guilak formed a startup company called CytexOrtho that is advancing the technology and starting clinical trials this year. His team also has pioneered the use of CRISPR-Cas9 technology to engineer cells with synthetic gene circuits that can secrete biologic drugs in response to factors such as inflammation or mechanical loading related to arthritis.
In addition to his academic positions, Guilak is also working closely with Mike Gagnon as the Chief Scientific and Innovation officer of AOCConnect, a platform and community of over 5000 members designed to advance and improve the orthopaedic landscape by developing and providing best practices across business, leadership, education, and research. Guilak is leading the AOCConnect team’s efforts to expand engagement of research in the orthopaedic community.
Guilak also is a professor of developmental biology in the School of Medicine and the director of research at Shriners Hospitals for Children — St. Louis. Guilak, who also is the director of research at Shriners Children in St. Louis, has received numerous other International Awards, including 5 separate mentoring awards, the Basic Research Award from the Osteoarthritis Research Society International; the Senior Scientist Award from the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Society, and he is the only three-time winner of the AAOS Kappa Delta Award, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Orthopaedics”.
Recent advances by Guilak’s Lab at Washington University & Shriners Children’s are highlighted here in this segment: