Kevin Stone

Athlete, Doctor, Inventor, Scientist

Kevin R. Stone, M.D. May 14, 2009 Kevin R. Stone, M.D. is an Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Stone Clinic and Chairman of The Stone Research Foundation in San Francisco. The Clinic treats athletes and people with sports injuries and arthritis focused on knee, shoulder and ankle injuries. The Foundation conducts research in advanced surgical techniques and tissue regeneration for orthopaedic sports medicine with the mission of accelerating healing, treating, preventing and curing arthritis. These efforts have led to improvements in cartilage replacement and regeneration, cruciate ligament repair and reconstruction, and techniques to prevent osteoarthritic degeneration. Dr. Stone has lectured around the world as an expert in cartilage and meniscal growth, replacement, and repair. He holds more than 50 U.S. patents on novel inventions to improve health care. Dr. Stone was the co-founder of ReGen Biologics, a publicly traded medical device company focused on meniscus regeneration. He is the former Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Aperion Inc., (formerly CrossCart Inc.) a venture capital funded medical device xenotransplantation company. Aperion developed a technique for removing the antigens from pig tissues so that they may be used in humans. The first xenograft device for reconstruction of ruptured cruciate ligaments (ACLs) received FDA approval for human clinical trials and a CE mark for sale in Europe. Dr. Stone is the former Founder and Chairman of Joint Juice, Inc., a San Francisco-based nutraceutical beverage company. Joint Juice was the first beverage with a full day's dose of glucosamine, proven to reduce pain, act as an anti-inflammatory, and aid in cartilage repair without side effects. Joint Juice gained wide national distribution at Costco, Sam Clubs, Walgreens and Wal-Mart after its first year of launch and is now owned and distributed by Premier Nutrition. Dr. Stone also founded Rescue Reel, Inc. which received the Popular Science Ten Best Inventions of the Year 2009 award. Rescue Reel is the first successful personal escape device to permit people to escape buildings up to 100 stories. Dr. Stone has been a physician for the Marin Ballet and the Smuin Ballets/SF, the U.S. Ski Team, the U.S. Pro Ski Tour, the Honda Ski Tour, The Jeep 48 Straight Tour, the Old Blues Rugby Club, Lawrence Pech Dance Company, the modern pentathlon at the U.S. Olympic Festival, and for the United States Olympic Training Center. He was trained at Harvard in internal medicine and orthopaedic surgery and Stanford in general surgery. His fellowship was in research at the Hospital for Special Surgery and in knee surgery in Lake Tahoe. Dr. Stone enjoys skiing, windsurfing, surfing and biking. He especially enjoys time with his wife and two daughters.

1. Solving problems, pushing the world forward and improving the lives of people I have the honor to treat. 2. I am passionate about helping people see their injuries as opportunities to become fitter faster and stronger than they have been in years. 3. Merging clinical care and research.

Biology can trump bionics. We are successfully merging our knowledge of cell behavior with scaffold characteristics to produce regeneration templates for cartilage, ligament and meniscus replacement permitting biologic joint replacements to delay or replace artificial joints. While the bionic (artificial) joints we now use are placed under robotic control without the use of bone cement and permit athletes to return to sports they are not natural and not perfect. Our biologic solutions in the clinic now and in our labs may last a lifetime and eventually may be better than the original issue. In the same way new hearing aids can hear higher frequencies, new cartilage may be more durable, new ligaments stronger. The solutions will combine both human and xenograft (animal) tissues. Centaurs of the past imagination are the athletes of our present and future medalists.

Spoke at TED on Bio Future: the future of knee replacement describing our research and clinical experience replacing the meniscus cartilage, the articular cartilage and the ligaments of people's knees in 2009 and spoke on Rescue Reel, our personal building escape device in 2010. Lead a TED Challenge on Voicemail Hell at TED 2013.

Seeing the future