Clinical Focus

• Sports Medicine
• Orthopaedic Surgery

Administrative Appointments

• Head, Team Physician, Stanford Football Program (2007 - present)
• Team Physician, Stanford Athletic Department (2005 - present)

Honors and Awards

• US Ski Team Physician, United States Ski and Snowboard Association (2005-curr)
• Listed in “Top US Orthopeadic Surgeons in Sports Medicine”, Consumers Research Council of America (2008)
• North American representative for Scientific Exchange with Europe, AOSSM/ESSKA (2008)
• Bone and Joint Decade Young Investigator Award, Bone and Joint Decade (2006)
• Basic Science Research Award, Smith and Nephew (2006)

Professional Education

Graduate & Fellowship Program Affiliations

• Orthopedic Surgery

Community & International Work

• North American Representative for Exhange of Surgical Techniques with Europe 

Current Research Interests

TISSUE ENGINEERING OF ARTICULAR (JOINT) CARTILAGE

Current Tissue Engineering studies will focus on 3 main areas:

1. The ability to harvest stem cells from a patient, induce them into cartilage cells, and place them back into the patient during the same surgical procedure. Current surgical techniques require 1 surgery to harvest the cells, 2-3 weeks of laboratory processing, and another surgery to implant the cells. These techniques would revolutionize the use of stem cells in Orthopaedic Surgery.

2. Reconfigure the biologic matrices and processing to allow resurfacing of entire joint surfaces. This process would make current metal joint replacements obsolete and would allow the treatment of arthritis with the patients own stem cells.

3. Decipher the genetic induction code and ideal matrix for meniscal cartilage engineering. This would allow the production of meniscal cartilage grafts from the patients own stem cells.


ANTERIOR CRUCIATE LIGAMENT (ACL) STUDIES

1. Female ACL tears-The incidence of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rupture in female athletes is two to eight times that in males. Although many anatomical and biomechanical gender differences have been described, evidence is beginning to accumulate that female hormones are responsible for alterations in ligament laxity and strength. Relaxin is a peptide hormone found in the sera of pregnant and non-pregnant females, yet is not detectable in male serum. This hormone is thought to be responsible for connective tissue remodeling secondary to its collagenolytic effects.

We have identified relaxin receptors on the human female ACL. This supports the conclusion that relaxin, a hormone found in some non-pregnant females, may be responsible for the high incidence of ACL rupture in female athletes. We have also shown that the administration of relaxin to female guinea pigs results in ACL laxity and weakness. Currently, we are investigating relaxin levels...

Clinical Trials

• Characterizing Knee Pain and Response to Surgery Using Local Biomarkers Recruiting

Publications

• Effect of bupivacaine on chondrocyte viability. Dragoo JL, Pun SY. Spine J. 2010; 10 (2): 172-3
• Mechanics of the anterior interval of the knee using open dynamic MRI. Dragoo JL, Phillips C, Schmidt JD, Scanlan SF, Blazek K, Steadman JR, Williams A. Clin Biomech (Bristol, Avon). 2010
• Biomechanical evaluation of a 1-stage revision anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction technique using a structural bone void filler for femoral fixation. Vaughn ZD, Schmidt J, Lindsey DP, Dragoo JL. Arthroscopy. 2009; 25 (9): 1011-8
• College football player with unstable C1 fracture: a case report. Bales CP, Chang I, Matheson G, Ouyang D, Dragoo JL. Am J Sports Med. 2009; 37 (1): 195-8
• The effect of relaxin on the female anterior cruciate ligament: Analysis of mechanical properties in an animal model. Dragoo JL, Padrez K, Workman R, Lindsey DP. Knee. 2009; 16 (1): 69-72