SAN FRANCISCO (September 23, 2022)- Michael Davies, MD, and Steven Garcia, MD, both residents in the UCSF Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Research Residents in the Feeley-Liu Lab, tied for first place at the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF) Southwest Region Resident Research Symposium at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. The symposium, attended by approximately 60 orthopedic researchers and live-streamed to more than 1,000 participants, provided residents from all over the southwest region with the opportunity to share their research projects among their collaborators, mentors, and peers.

Dr. Davies and Dr. Garcia presented their outstanding basic science projects to a panel of 3 judges. Dr. Davies won for his project titled "Defining Endogenous Mitochondrial Transfer in Muscle Following Rotator Cuff Injury", which examined horizontal mitochondrial transfer as a novel function of fibroadipogenic progenitors (FAPs) to support myogenic cells and regulate muscle homeostasis. Meanwhile, Dr. Garcia was similarly rewarded for his project titled "Heterogeneous Human Fibroadipogenic Cells Subpopulations are Altered in Injury", which utilized flow cytometry and single-cell RNAseq to identify transcriptionally distinct subpopulations of human FAPs in both injured and healthy muscle.