Massive regenerative medicine project aimed at battlefield injuries

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – A consortium spearheaded by the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center has been awarded $42.5 million over five years to co-lead one of two academic groups that will form the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM).

The consortiums, working with the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research, will use the science of regenerative medicine to develop new treatments for wounded soldiers.

The Wake Forest-led collaboration will be headed by Anthony Atala, M.D., director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and Alan J. Russell, Ph.D., director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. A second consortium will be managed by Rutgers and the Cleveland Clinic.

AFIRM will be dedicated to repairing battlefield injuries through the use of regenerative medicine, science that takes advantage of the body’s natural healing powers to restore or replace damaged tissue and organs. Therapies developed by AFIRM will also benefit people in the civilian population with burns or severe trauma.

"For the first time in the history of regenerative medicine, we have the opportunity to work at a national level to bring transformational technologies to wounded soldiers, and to do so in partnership with the armed services," said Atala. "This field of science has the potential to significantly impact our ability to successfully treat major trauma."

The Wake Forest-University of Pittsburgh team has committed to develop clinical therapies over the next five years that will focus on the following five areas:

• Burn repair
• Wound healing without scarring
• Craniofacial reconstruction
• Limb reconstruction, regeneration or transplantation
• Compartment syndrome, a condition related to inflammation after surgery or injury that can lead to increased pressure, impaired blood flow, nerve damage and muscle death.
  
  

AFIRM will have multiple groups working in each area. For example, in the area of burns, researchers will pursue treatments including engineered skin products, bio-printing of skin in the field and repairs using stem cells derived from amniotic fluid.

The consortium’s ability to deliver new treatments is based on a four-year history of the McGowan and Wake Forest institutes working in partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense on regenerative medicine projects.

For example, the group is pursuing projects such as developing a product to quickly stop bleeding and engineering ear implants for surgical reconstruction. In addition, scientists have successfully grown muscle, bone and blood vessels in the laboratory with the goal of one day combining them to create more complex organs.

"Our ability to provide these treatments is in part due to our team’s long experience in this field and our broad pipeline of technologies," said Russell. "Our goal is to use our position as the international leaders in developing restorative therapies for battlefield trauma to improve the outcomes for our wounded.”