The 31st Annual Meeting of the European Orthopaedic Research Society (EORS), recently held in the beautiful city of Porto (Portugal), has hosted a special session entirely dedicated to ISSLS members entitled: “ISSLS Translational Symposium on Low Back Pain Research”. Organized by Stefan Dudli (University of Zurich, Switzerland) and Gianluca Vadalà (Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Italy), this symposium presented cutting-edge insights on the latest advancements in the field.

The session was opened by the Keynote Lecture “Developing regeneration therapies for the intervertebral disc” from Benjamin Gantenbein (University of Bern, Switzerland), who presented the greatest achievements and the most recent results of his research group over the last few decades. Luca Ambrosio (Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Italy) gave a provocative talk with the title “Lost in translation: why we have not regenerated the intervertebral disc yet”, discussing some of the issues that are hampering the clinical translation of regenerative treatments for disc degeneration. In her presentation entitled “Therapeutic potential of mesenchymal stem cell-derived bioactive factors: impact on intervertebral disc degeneration”, Graciosa Teixeira (University of Ulm, Germany) explored the emerging role of cell-free treatments isolated from stem cell secretome. Then, Sybille Grad (AO Research Institute, Switzerland), provided a comprehensive outlook on innovative bioreactors for whole disc culture at her institution during her talk “Simulation of physiological and detrimental loading in whole intervertebral disc organ models”. Eventually, Jeremy Fairbank (University of Oxford, United Kingdom) closed the session with a presentation on his ISSLS prize-winning paper, “Comparison of degenerative MRI features of the intervertebral disc between those with and without chronic low back pain. An exploratory study of two large female populations using automated annotation”.

The session was very well attended and fueled with productive discussions and networking among ISSLS and EORS members, witnessing the shared collaborative spirit between the two societies.

Written by Luca Ambrosio