SISA Live Surgery Congress to focus on preservation of knee joint

Over 200 surgeons will be participating in the 8th Sai Institute of Sports Injury & Arthroscopy (SISA) Live Surgery 2015 Advanced Knee Course that will be held in Hyderabad on Sunday.

Apart from live surgeries, new techniques and advances in the field will be discussed by experts led by Dr Raghuveer Reddy K (Organising Secretary), Dr Anant Joshi (renowned Sports surgeon, Mumbai, Chief Consultant of BCCI) and Dr Andrew De Velig (South Africa).

The meet will focus on “Preservation of Knee Joint”, newer surgical techniques like ‘high tibial realignment osteotomy’ of leg to correct mechanical axis, ‘single stage cartilage repair’ using bone marrow stem cells, ‘knee cushion meniscus repair’, ‘advanced method of reconstruction of anterior cruciate ligament’ using single hamstring tendon, ‘multiple ligament injury reconstructions’ and ‘unicondylar partial knee replacement’.

Speaking on the occasion Dr Anant Joshi said, “Joint replacement is usually for old people, those above 65 years of age. If knee joint replacement is done at a young age, they can have severe problems as they age. The best way to preserve knee joint is to take care of them and get treated at the right time.

Elaborating on the symptoms of knee problems, he said, “The initial symptoms of knee going awry can be identified when your knee becomes stiff or your experience pain after exercise. Shift to body friendly activities to less stressful ways. High impact activities like zumba dancing and aerobics can destroy the knees. People should adopt exercises gradually and go for the ones, which suit their body.”

Promising new melanoma drug in the offing Scientists have discovered a new compound that shows promise for treating deadly skin cancers like melanoma that are resistant or unresponsive to leading therapies today.

The new compound, named SBI-756, targets a specific molecular machine known as the translation initiation complex. These structures are in every cell and play the critical role of translating mRNA into proteins. In cancer cells the complex is impaired, producing extra protein and providing a growth advantage to tumours.

SBI-756 causes the translation complex to dissociate, and was shown to inhibit melanoma cell growth, said scientists from Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP).

"The unique target of SBI-756 makes it especially promising for use in combination therapy," said Ze'ev Ronai, senior author and scientific director of SBP's La Jolla campus in California.

A major issue limiting the effectiveness of current melanoma therapies is that tumours become resistant to treatment. "Combining drugs that come at a melanoma from different angles may help overcome the problem of drug resistance,” Ronai added. About 50 per cent of melanomas are caused by mutations in a specific gene called BRAF.

The team found that if SBI-756 is co-administered with vemurafenib, a BRAF inhibitor, the tumours disappeared and most importantly, they did not reoccur. Even in mice with advanced/late stage skin cancer, the reappearance of resistant tumours was slowed by including SBI-756.

These data suggests that SBI-756 provides a significant advantage in overcoming tumour resistance. "The ability of this compound to delay or eliminate the formation of resistant melanomas is very exciting," Ronai added.

The team is now testing whether combining SBI-756 with existing drugs used for treating these types of melanomas can make the tumours disappear. (The paper was published in the journal Cancer Research.)