Vaida Glatt, PhD

Dr. Vaida Glatt is an Assistant Professor and the Director of Research at the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, USA. She completed her postdoctoral fellowships at the Center for Advanced Orthopaedic Studies, Harvard Medical School, and the Julius Wolff Institute for Biomechanics and Musculoskeletal Regeneration in Berlin, Germany. In 2012, Dr. Glatt joined the Trauma Research Group at Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, as a Senior Research Fellow. Soon after arriving in Australia, she was awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowship to continue her research work.

Since then, she has acquired extensive research expertise in the musculoskeletal field with a focus on bone regeneration and healing by using preclinical and translational in vivo models to develop novel treatments. One of her primary research focuses is in the field of mechano-biology, which is the study of the interactions between mechanical and biological factors to develop and explain the influence of mechanical conditions on the progression of bone healing. In fact, she was the first in the field to accelerate bone healing by a process called Reversed Dynamization. Additionally, Dr. Glatt’s focus is on tissue regenerative medicine where she is actively developing therapies to improve the regeneration of bone tissue by means of improving the effectiveness of bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP-2) while minimizing the side effects and doses required. Based on this research, she developed a natural carrier, the Biomimetic Hematoma, and filed a provisional patent in 2018 through the Office of Technology Commercialization, UTHSCSA. This proprietary patent relates to the compositions and methods of improving treatment and accelerating the healing of complex bone injuries such as large bone defects in patients. Furthermore, in 2020, she was awarded President’s Translational and Entrepreneurial Research Fund (PTEF) from UTHSCSA to continue this technology towards a clinical application. Dr. Glatt is also involved with multidisciplinary projects on musculoskeletal research with collaborators on nearly every continent.

Dr. Glatt is the author of over 70 publications in peer-reviewed journals and is a contributing book author. She has presented her work at over 60 international conferences, is a sought out speaker and lecturer at various top international universities, has editorial responsibilities with multiple international journals, is a reviewer for the AO Foundation grant applications, and is a member of three major societies in the field. Dr. Glatt has received local, national, and international research grants in the field of bone healing, including being awarded several grants from the AO Foundation, and later awarded with substantial grants from the Department of Defense in USA and the German Research Council (DFG), amongst others.