In a matter of only a couple of months, Hannah Lee, MD, PhD, has ramped up a robust research program at Penn Orthopaedics. “I am truly honored that Dr. [L. Scott] Levin gave me this opportunity at Penn, where so much outstanding musculoskeletal and nerve research is unfolding,” says Dr. Lee, a hand and wrist specialist who started in September 2020, after completing her hand surgery fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “With its outstanding funding status and collaborative investigators with expertise in bone, cartilage, and tendon, Penn Orthopaedic research is truly second to none.”
Dr. Lee’s focus currently resides with peripheral nerve regeneration. Typically, in an injury where the nerve is cut, the surgeon will attempt to restore its structural integrity and function. That becomes much more difficult when the patient presents late or has lost a sizable segment of the nerve.
“In those instances, it’s not feasible to try to repair the nerve from one end to the other. So we’re trying to come up with conduits and scaffolds, like a tube, that connect the two ends of the nerve,” Dr. Lee says. “The gold standard is to borrow a nerve from another part of the body, but that requires more time for the surgery, and it’s associated with donor-site morbidity. There also aren’t a lot nerves that are expendable. A novel conduit or scaffold, on the other hand, could guide the nerve regeneration through the nerve defect in relatively short order.”
But a truly novel conduit or scaffold, Dr. Lee says, would require extensive testing before it was even approved for human trials, and that would eat up too much valuable time. Instead, Dr. Lee is working with materials that are already FDA-approved for other applications. If she’s able to configure a conduit or scaffold from those repurposed materials, it could be translated to the operating room much sooner.
Dr. Lee says that she’s begun writing a grant, which she anticipates bringing to the bedside within the next 10 years.
While she was a student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Dr. Lee attended a lecture by Constance R. Chu, MD, the Albert Ferguson Endowed Chair and Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the school. By that time, Dr. Lee had already developed a passion for translational research that bridges the gap between “bench and bedside.” In Dr. Chu, however, she discovered what a clinician-scientist at the top of her field looks like.
“She really got me excited about the concept of being an orthopaedic surgeon and a scientist,” Dr. Lee says.
Dr. Lee went on to join Dr. Chu’s research lab while she worked on her PhD in bioengineering, specifically studying cartilage tissue regeneration. Formally, Dr. Chu served as her advisor. Informally, Dr. Chu was perhaps Dr. Lee’s closest mentor. During their brief but meaningful time together, the respect was mutual.
“Hannah, early on, demonstrated a unique combination of creativity, initiative, and determination that allowed her to excel at award-winning basic research with direct clinical relevance,” says Dr. Chu, who, today, is the Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Stanford University. “She was also both a team player and a leader in the lab. Those qualities allowed her to accomplish more than enough in just three years to brilliantly defend her PhD, a process that can take six or more years.”
After Dr. Lee earned her PhD, she returned to medical school. It occurred to her how much interaction she’d had with orthopaedic surgeons during her time in Dr. Chu’s lab and that she’d come to appreciate their camaraderie. When she began her rotations, Dr. Lee’s interest in orthopaedic surgery deepened when she was able to observe the impact that the procedures had on patients’ quality of life.
That impression hasn’t lessened any now that she’s the one responsible for the success of the procedures. Dr. Lee divides her practice time between Penn and The Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center, which is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania.