Dr. Brian Cole, managing partner and sports medicine surgeon, Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush (MOR), was awarded the 2025 Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF) Clinical Research Award. The award which recognizes outstanding clinical research related directly to musculoskeletal disease or injury is reviewed, graded and selected by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) Research Development Committee.

Dr. Cole's honor is for his work to advance osteochondral allograft (OCA) transplantation to treat cartilage and bone defects in the knee. Dr. Cole and his team applied translational basic science and clinical research to study allograft procurement, processing, preservation, implantation, surgical technique, and decision-making. What was once a niche procedure is now considered the most common, reliable and reproducible method for joint restoration in patients with pain and reduced range of motion.

Dr. Cole’s team included Drs. Jorge Chahla, Susanna G. Chubinskaya, Ron Gilat, and Adam Yanke who are all associated with Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush or Rush University Medical Center, and Dr. Rachel Frank, University of Colorado, Denver. They spent more than two decades studying virtually every aspect of the OCA transplantation procedure and studied how to enhance clinical understanding and technical precision for better results.

Read the press release here.