After a late-night arrival in Chicago, the fellows braved rush hour in the US’s second most congested city to walk into Midwest orthopedics at RUSH at 9am. Specifically, the department of Rheumatology, to meet professors Anne-Marie Malfait and Rachel Miller and present to the Chicago centre of musculoskeletal pain. After a warm welcome, members of C-COMP presented on a wide array of groundbreaking methodologies, from Alia Obediet’s in vivo demonstration of nociceptor invasion within rodent OA models, to Daniel Hoffman’s preliminary work of iPSC pain on a chip technology. Presentations by the fellows brought the morning to a close. Ryan was particularly excited to share his new work on in vitro modelling the nociceptor-bone interface to the world leading experts in OA pain modelling and finished with an ardent debate of statistical analysis techniques between clinical travelling fellows.
Fellows then flew into blistering tours of the facilities within the RUSH campus located in the heart of Chicago, including a tour of the automated slide scanning facilities that made Tim H and Ryan reconsider their upcoming funding requests, confocal imaging of cleared knee specimens to reveal innervation patterns with Robin Vroman, a full tour of the leading animal facilities with Shingo Ishihara and calcium imaging in rodent DRG on a chip technology with Daniel Hoffman and Spencer Fullam. Informal conversations with Miller and Malfait at the lab favourite nightlife hotspot, the Twisted Spoke, then continued in great spirits well into the evening.
Four of the fellows were lucky enough to spend the weekend in Chicago taking in the sights and sounds of the windy city. Tim Hopkins made a personal effort to set a record for the number of enthusiastic visits to the cloud gate “bean” while Muhamed showed his selflessness by flying to Washington DC over the weekend to attend a charity gala. Sunday was made up of more sightseeing and an evening at the iconic second city comedy club.
The fellows were treated to a second opportunity to present their work in Chicago with a visit to the Richard J miller lab in Northwestern university to discuss some neurobiology in osteoarthritis with another round of tours of world leading labs. The fellows then rushed back to the airport to begin their journey to the American south for their next visit to North Carolina and Duke university.
British Orthopaedic Research Society 