Michael G. Dunn

Dr. Dunn is a tenured Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Founding Director of the Orthopaedic Research Laboratories at Rutgers – Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. His graduate training in Biomedical Engineering focused on wound healing and the biomechanical and biological properties of extracellular matrix-derived biomaterials. During his 32-year academic career, he has obtained numerous research grants, including Federal funding from the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense, pertaining to tissue engineering strategies for musculoskeletal soft tissue repair and reconstruction utilizing collagen-based, synthetic, and composite resorbable biomaterial scaffolds. He has authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications and 7 US patents while supervising the Doctoral or Masters's research projects of 15 graduate students. Numerous Orthopaedic residents, medical students, and undergraduate students have also trained in his lab. During the last decade, he and Dr. Charles Gatt have guided the development of MeniscoFixTM, a novel patented implant developed in their laboratories, to replace the meniscus of the knee. The basic science lab project evolved into a translational product development effort, with Dunn and Gatt co-founding NovoPedics, Inc., a medical device start-up company initially funded by the NJ Health Foundation – Foundation Venture Capital Group, in 2013. Based on the research performed in his lab and recent commercialization efforts at NovoPedics, MeniscoFixTM, which has structural and functional properties similar to those of the native human meniscus is a potential long-term clinical solution to restoring knee function in patients who suffer from a severe meniscus tear or who have undergone a previous meniscectomy.