This SmartTRAK interview features a panel of experts discussing the clinical shift in hip preservation toward pre-sutured, "off-the-shelf" allograft solutions.

In this interview, SmartTRAK hosts a distinguished panel featuring Andrew Jimenez, MD (Yale School of Medicine), Winston Gwathmey, MD (University of Virginia), and Kevin Whitten (chief commercial officer, AlloSource) to discuss the clinical realities of modern hip preservation. The conversation highlights the shift from time-consuming autograft preparations to innovative "off-the-shelf" allograft solutions. Specifically, the panel explores the operational and clinical advantages of AceConnex, a pre-prepared fascia lata allograft designed to reduce intra-op time and standardize outcomes in labral reconstruction procedures. Click on the following video to learn more (17:44 min). A link to download a complete transcript of the interview is also provided below.

SmartTRAK: Hi, this is David Shepard with SmartTRAK. It's my pleasure to be joined by Dr. Andrew Jimenez, the assistant professor of orthopedics and rehabilitation at Yale School of Medicine, and Dr. Winston Gwathmey, professor of orthopedic surgery at UVA. We're also joined by Kevin Whitten, chief commercial officer at AlloSource, and tonight we're going to be talking about AceConnex.

Thank you very much for joining us, gentlemen. And feel free to jump in at any time, so whoever wants to start with these questions, and again, feel free to interject and jump in. But the first thing I wanted to do is try to get a sense of exactly what type of clinical procedure we're doing here, or what's the issue that occurs with these patients, where AceConnex comes in and is an excellent solution for these patients.

Dr. Winston Gwathmey: I can get started. Hip arthroscopy is a procedure that addresses injuries of the hip that are soft tissue injuries, labral injuries, femoroacetabular impingement. And we've seen a proliferation of this procedure in the past 20 years or so. And with that, we're learning a lot more and more about how the hip functions. And what we're seeing in 2025 is that sometimes the labrum, the soft tissue gasket ring that fits around the hip joint, is not in a situation that can be repaired or salvaged. And so luckily, we've learned a procedure called a labral reconstruction in which we replace part or all of the labrum with the cadaver graft. And what that does is it provides a lot of labral functions and anatomy in a situation where the labrum is deficient or not repairable.

Dr. Andrew Jimenez: And just to piggyback off that, there's been a real evolution in terms of labral treatment and management. Early days of hip arthroscopy, starting off with just labral debridement and labral excision. As our techniques and our implants became better, we moved onto doing labral repair. And what we invariably came up with was ...

Want to learn more about the shift from time-consuming autograft preparations to innovative "off-the-shelf" allograft solutions? Click the button below to download and read the complete transcript of our roundtable discussion, conducted by David Shepard, SmartTRAK GM/Sr Analyst, Orthobio & Regen.

The high costs and complexity involved in manual manufacturing hinder the commercial viability of regenerative cell therapies. Octane Biotherapeutics seeks to remove these barriers by integrating its automated "Cocoon" production system with the well-established Novocart 3D and Novocart Inject platforms. SmartTRAK interviews Dr. Robert Spiro, CEO of Octane Biotherapeutics, to explore the company's strategic acquisition of assets from Aesculap Biologics and TETEC AG, and their plan to make a significant entry into the US Cartilage Repair Market. 

Click on the following video to learn more (09:37 min). A link to download a complete transcript of the interview is also provided below.

SmartTRAK: Hi, this is David Shepard with SmartTRAK, and I'm here with Dr. Robert Spiro, the CEO of Octane Biotherapeutics. Thank you for taking the time, really appreciate it.

Robert Spiro: Good to see you, Dave. Thank you.

Yes, good to see you as well. Tell me a little bit about Octane and the acquisition of Novocart 3D and Novocart Inject by Octane.

RS: Sure. It's a journey. It really started about 2010, '11, when I first started with Aesculap Biologics in this space. And having been in the cartilage regenerative space through several companies, really knowing that the scale-up of any type of manual culture, cell culture system was a big challenge from a commercial standpoint. We have always been looking for ways to automate this process. We started some on our own, but I encountered this technology with Octane, which was back in 2011—started that collaboration to transfer our manual autologous chondrocyte culture process to an automated system. They had already really started on this Cocoon technology, but we started to marry it to the Novocart program that long ago.

The relationship was there, all along, with the divestiture away from B. Braun Aesculap as they restructured all of their portfolio. It was really a natural progression for Octane to step in and acquire the company, not only Aesculap Biologics, but our sister company in Germany, TETEC AG, that developed the same technology. Octane Biotherapeutics is fully global, both German as well as US. And so, the Cocoon technology is an important step for us to commercialize both Novocart 3D and Novocart Inject for a number of reasons, and anyone in the cell culture space understands that scale up, scale out of those kind of manual process is expensive. It's one of the things that drives the cost of these products so high. So, it's been a great collaboration, and the fact that they stepped in through the acquisition just made a lot of sense for everybody.

RS: The hallmark of this is why it's really ideal for autologous cells. It's this ...

Want to learn more about how integrating the automated "Cocoon" cell production system with Novocart 3D and Novocart Inject platforms will disrupt the complexity and costs of the US Cartilage Repair Market? Click the button below to download and read the complete transcript of our interview with Dr. Robert Spiro, CEO of Octane Biotherapeutics, conducted by David Shepard, SmartTRAK GM/Sr Analyst, Orthobio & Regen.

James Voos, MD, chair of the Department of Orthopedics and Sports Medicine at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, Cleveland Browns team physician, and president of the NFL Physicians Society (NFLPS), shares his goals for the society and offers insight into how he is using biotechnology to monitor recovery, prevent further injuries, and safely return athletes to competition.

James Voos, MD, president of the NFL Physicians Society (NFLPS), discusses the society's efforts to standardize care for NFL players across the league in an interview with SmartTRAK at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM) 2025 Annual Meeting recently held in Nashville, TN.

Dr. Voos also shares an update on ongoing clinical research for osteoarthritis treatment with stem cells. To listen to the interview, please click on the following video (4:18 minutes). A link to download a complete transcript of the interview is alsoprovided below. 

SmartTRAK: Hi, this is Dave Shepard. I'm here at the AOSSM 2025. Keep watching for my interview with Dr. James Voos, who is the team physician for the Cleveland Browns, and also the president of the NFL Physicians’ Society. Dr. Voos, thanks for joining us.

James Voos, MD: Thank you very much for the invitation. I appreciate it.

Excellent. Tell me a little bit about the NFL PS and a little bit about what you're doing, what your initiatives are, what your goals are.

JV: As president of the NFL Physician Society, we represent all of the physicians that provide care for our professional athletes in football. That's not only our orthopedic surgeons, but our medical physicians and all of our associated consultants. So we help to provide standards for how to practice across the league, and that way we assure that every athlete and every team has ...

Interested in how biotechnology can be used to monitor recovery, prevent further injuries and safely return athletes to competition? Click
the button below to download the full transcript of SmartTRAK GM/Sr Analyst David Shepard's interview of James Voos, MD, president of the NFL Physicians Society (NFLPS) from AOSSM 2025.

SmartTRAK provides insights into the latest trends, research and consensus opinions in surgical Orthobiologic treatments and non-operative regenerative medicine from this year’s BA Summit and AANA meetings.

Dr Cheryl Blanchard, president and CEO of Anika Therapeutics, discusses the company, technology and developments for future growth in an interview with SmartTRAK.

In a recent interview with SmartTRAK, Dr. Cheryl Blanchard, president and CEO of Anika Therapeutics, discussed the company’s strategic direction, proprietary technology and advancements in its next-generation osteoarthritis (OA) pain management and regenerative solutions.

To find out more about the company, its differentiated technologies, products and growth strategy, click on the following video (26:40 min).

Interview topics by timecode are provided below, as is a link to download a complete transcript of the interview.

Interview Outline by Timecode:

00:20 Introduction to Anika Therapeutics, president and CEO Dr. Cheryl Blanchard and the company’s strategy.
01:14 The US OA Injectables Market and Anika’s next-generation OA pain solution, Cingal.
02:52 Cingal’s advantages and how it fit in the treatment continuum.
04:56 Cingal’s positioning and clinical trials’ progress.
10:47 Marketing communication, commercial and pricing approach and beyond knee OA.
13:42 Hyalofast, Anika’s next-generation cartilage repair solution.
17:25 Anika’s regenerative platform and the Integrity Implant System.
19:54 Cheryl Blanchard’s take on the next major disruptive force.
22:42 Thoughts around healthcare policy changes, tariffs uncertainty and other macro trends.

Click the button below to download and read the complete transcript of SmartTRAK's interview with Dr. Cheryl Blanchard, president and CEO of Anika Therapeutics, conducted by  Freddy Buntoum, SmartTRAK Senior Analyst, Orthobiologics and Regenerative Medicine.

Thomas Lash, COO and co-founder of Aatru Medical, talks about the company’s innovative single-use negative pressure device, NP-Sims, a Negative Pressure Surgical Incision Management System.

Thomas Lash, chief operating officer and co-founder of Aatru Medical elaborates on the company’s strategy to mitigate the risk of surgical site infections through NP-SIMS, their single-use negative pressure surgical incision management system. To listen to the interview, please click on the following video (21:21 minutes). A link to download a complete transcript of the interview is provided below. 

SmartTRAK: Hi, this is David Shepard, senior analyst with SmartTRAK. Today it's my pleasure to be joined by Tom Lash, COO and co-founder of Aatru. He's going to talk to us today about a product that he co-invented, called NPSims. Tom, tell us a little about your company and about the product.

Tom Lash: We started the business about eight years ago, a small research and commercialization team with the goal of developing an alternative solution for the single-use, disposable negative pressure wound therapy market.  Kind of a mouthful to say that, but in essence, what we were trying to do is looking at the predicate devices that are on the market, we knew that if we were going to try and have a product that could make an impact on that market segment, it would be necessary for us to find an innovative mode of action to create the negative pressure without the current use of electromechanical pump which powers the leading products that are in use today. They have an electromechanical pump. They're battery-operated. They have software. Those products were primarily devised for the open or chronic wound market, and because of our focus on the surgical incision market, we were able to design something that was different. We believe the current products are probably over-engineered for the surgical incision market. So, our approach was to devise ...

Click the button below to download and read the complete transcript of SmartTRAK's interview with  Aatru Medical's Co-Founder and COO Thomas Lash, conducted by  David Shepard, SmartTRAK Lead Analyst, Orthobio & Regen.

To find out more, watch the following video (4:27 min). A link to a transcript of the interview is also provided below. 

SmartTRAK: Hi, this is Sharon O'Reilly. I'm at the Canaccord Conference before the 2025 AAOS, and I ran into Alessandra Pavesio, who's so excited about her company, Doron Therapeutics.

So, Alessandra, why don't you tell us a little bit about the company and some of the exciting new developments.

Alessandra Pavesio: It's always great to see you, Sharon. I love bumping into you and having some really good news to deliver. First of all, what is Doron Therapeutics? It's a management-led spin-off. We really were passionate about a technology that we've developed with Bioventus, and when Bioventus divested from this program for financial considerations, we were able to negotiate a very favorable deal to actually set up a spin-off company and go raise private capital to invest in the program.

The good news is that, yes, we've set up a company. Yes, we have raised private capital. And so now we are really up and running and getting ready to start a Phase III study.

Big milestone that we've accomplished is that we've been recognized by FDA as an RMAT therapy. RMAT means Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy. As such, that means attention from senior officials at FDA that are really partnering with you to get this product to market for the patients that we serve. Super excited.

SmartTRAK: Tell us about the product.

AP: So our lead program is called MOTYS. It's placental-derived injectable therapeutic. It's a biological drug that ...

Click the button below to download and read the complete transcript of SmartTRAK's interview with Doron Therpeutics' CEO Alessandro Pavesio, conducted by Sharon O'Reilly, SmartTRAK Founder and CEO.

In 2024, SmartTRAK continued to empower you to Be The Expert in the MedTech industry. As your trusted resource for up-to-date industry insights, we delivered real-time market data, analysis and actionable insights across the orthopedics, wound care, regenerative medicine and neurotherapy markets. Here are SmartTRAK's Top Blog Posts from 2024, offering valuable perspectives from our expert analysts.

1. Skin Substitute Market Rocked by DOJ Investigations
   SmartTRAK believes the billions of dollars of Medicare abuse already uncovered is the tip of the iceberg in services billed to Medicare via the Physician Fee Schedule.
   
   
2. Medtronic: Making Waves At NANS 2024
   Medtronic executives discuss how the company is making waves in interventional pain, minimally invasive spine and deep brain stimulation in an interview with SmartTRAK at NANS 2024.
   
   
3. Spine Market Movers to Watch in 2024
   SmartTRAK highlights companies to watch as they continue their double-digit growth train with multiple catalysts for expansion in 2024.