Buckley Lab Receives NIH Grant
BME Assistant Professor Mark Buckley has recieved an NIH R03 grant for the project entitled "Tracking Achilles tendon compression to monitor insertional Achilles tendinopathy." Insertional Achilles tendionpathy (IAT) is a painful and common disroder 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.