Project Description
Fabrisia Ambrosio, PhD, MPT
Principal Investigator and Harvard Site Lead
Dr. Ambrosio is the Inaugural Director of the Spaulding Research Institute’s Atlantic Charter Discovery Center for Musculoskeletal Research. The mission of the Discovery Center for Musculoskeletal Recovery is to maximize functional outcomes for patients living with musculoskeletal injury. Towards this mission, Dr. Ambrosio describes her research trajectory as rehabilitative science by the powers of ten. Her interests reside at the intersection of physiology and physics and span people to particles.
Dr. Ambrosio has been credited with founding a new field: Regenerative Rehabilitation. Regenerative Rehabilitation is defined as “the application of rehabilitation protocols and principles together with regenerative medicine therapeutics toward the goal of optimizing functional recovery through tissue regeneration, remodeling, or repair.” (Rando and Ambrosio, Cell Stem Cell, 2018). In the 12 years since the first call was published to the field for the integration of regenerative medicine with rehabilitative science (Ambrosio et al, Phys Ther, 2010; Ambrosio et al, Journal of Rehabilitation Research & Development, 2010), the Regenerative Rehabilitation paradigm has been extended to multiple models, including, for example, cartilage degeneration, stroke, and spinal cord injuries. In recognition of its potential to impact clinical practice, Regenerative Rehabilitation was cited in the 2016 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Plan as, “an example of actions that will help meet the strategic goals of the NIH institutes and centers that support rehabilitation research.” As a further testament to the importance of this field of inquiry, the NIH awarded $10M to support formation of the Alliance for Regenerative Rehabilitation Research & Training, for which Dr. Ambrosio serves as the lead director. Her efforts have also been extensively recognized internationally, and she serve as Chair of the Tissue Engineering Regenerative Medicine International Society Regenerative Rehabilitation Thematic Group and Founding Director of the International Consortium for Regenerative Rehabilitation, which includes 16 institutions representing North America, Europe, and Asia.