Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Houston Chronicle
April 18, 2008
Pg. 1
Rice University and UT-Houston get a $2 million grant to regrow maimed muscle and marrow and 'make our soldiers whole again'
By Todd Ackerman, Houston Chronicle
Two Houston institutions will step up their work growing bone tissue for facial injuries as part of a mammoth national effort to bring regenerative medicine breakthroughs to wounded soldiers.
The $250 million initiative, the biggest to date involving the young science, is a response to the high number of traumatic injuries being suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan. The numbers reflect battlefield medicine advances that have yielded unprecedented survival rates but also have left many soldiers disabled.
"The (initiative) will work to develop techniques that help to make our soldiers whole again," Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker said at its announcement at the Pentagon on Thursday. "(It) will use the soldiers' own stem cells to repair nerve damage, regrow muscles and tendons, repair bone wounds, help them heal without scarring ... and help in the cranial reconstruction of severe head injuries."
The latter research is being conducted at Rice University and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Rice bioengineer Antonios Mikos and UT-Houston surgeon Dr. Mark Wong, the project leaders, have worked for years to coax adult stem cells culled from bone marrow into bone cells.
The new grant will give them $2 million over the next five years to speed up the work, moving it from laboratory and animal experiments to clinical trials. Mikos and Wong said they're optimistic they'll be able to bring the bone reconstruction advances to soldiers within five years.
"That's the exciting thing about the grant," said Wong, who has worked in the field for about 16 years. "Not only is it the biggest effort I can recall in the field, it's the first I can think of where the emphasis is on getting the research into clinical trials as fast as possible."
Dr. Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said the idea for the new Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine came last November, when two teams of researchers reported they had developed a way to convert adult stem cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells, the most versatile type.
The breakthrough gave hope that the much-touted promise of stem cells was closer than previously thought.
Stem cells are considered the key to regenerative medicine because of their ability to morph into any kind of tissue, but the controversy over the morality of killing embryos to obtain them held the field back. Adult stem cells sidestep the conflict.
All the Institute for Regenerative Medicine grants involve adult stem cells.
Casscells, a UT-Houston cardiologist until being named assistant secretary a year ago, said the development of therapies to help soldiers regrow tissue, skin and other organs is needed, because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in 900 soldiers having to undergo amputations and 900 more having suffered substantial burns. Another 100 can't see, and about 150 have lost spinal cord function.
There are no available figures on the number of soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan who have required facial reconstructions, but Mikos and Wong said it's obviously significant.
Plans call for the clinical trials to be done at the trauma centers at Ben Taub General Hospital and Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston. Once shown to be successful there, the bone-regrowing technologies will be brought to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The research involves taking primitive stem cells from adult bone marrow, placing them on biodegradable scaffolding and chemically stimulating them. They can then be inserted in the body to facilitate growth or grown outside it, then implanted.
"In a way, it's akin to the early stages of research with penicillin — how much does it take to kill an infection, how much is too much," Wong said. "There's a lot of trial and error, a lot of experimentation."
More than 30 institutions are participating in the institute, which is divided into two consortia, one led by Wake Forest University and the University of Pittsburgh, the other by Rutgers University and the Cleveland Clinic. The institutions were selected by competitive peer review.
Funding comes from the Pentagon, members of the consortia and the National Institutes of Health.
April 18, 2008
Pg. 1
Rice University and UT-Houston get a $2 million grant to regrow maimed muscle and marrow and 'make our soldiers whole again'
By Todd Ackerman, Houston Chronicle
Two Houston institutions will step up their work growing bone tissue for facial injuries as part of a mammoth national effort to bring regenerative medicine breakthroughs to wounded soldiers.
The $250 million initiative, the biggest to date involving the young science, is a response to the high number of traumatic injuries being suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan. The numbers reflect battlefield medicine advances that have yielded unprecedented survival rates but also have left many soldiers disabled.
"The (initiative) will work to develop techniques that help to make our soldiers whole again," Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker said at its announcement at the Pentagon on Thursday. "(It) will use the soldiers' own stem cells to repair nerve damage, regrow muscles and tendons, repair bone wounds, help them heal without scarring ... and help in the cranial reconstruction of severe head injuries."
The latter research is being conducted at Rice University and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Rice bioengineer Antonios Mikos and UT-Houston surgeon Dr. Mark Wong, the project leaders, have worked for years to coax adult stem cells culled from bone marrow into bone cells.
The new grant will give them $2 million over the next five years to speed up the work, moving it from laboratory and animal experiments to clinical trials. Mikos and Wong said they're optimistic they'll be able to bring the bone reconstruction advances to soldiers within five years.
"That's the exciting thing about the grant," said Wong, who has worked in the field for about 16 years. "Not only is it the biggest effort I can recall in the field, it's the first I can think of where the emphasis is on getting the research into clinical trials as fast as possible."
Dr. Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said the idea for the new Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine came last November, when two teams of researchers reported they had developed a way to convert adult stem cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells, the most versatile type.
The breakthrough gave hope that the much-touted promise of stem cells was closer than previously thought.
Stem cells are considered the key to regenerative medicine because of their ability to morph into any kind of tissue, but the controversy over the morality of killing embryos to obtain them held the field back. Adult stem cells sidestep the conflict.
All the Institute for Regenerative Medicine grants involve adult stem cells.
Casscells, a UT-Houston cardiologist until being named assistant secretary a year ago, said the development of therapies to help soldiers regrow tissue, skin and other organs is needed, because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in 900 soldiers having to undergo amputations and 900 more having suffered substantial burns. Another 100 can't see, and about 150 have lost spinal cord function.
There are no available figures on the number of soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan who have required facial reconstructions, but Mikos and Wong said it's obviously significant.
Plans call for the clinical trials to be done at the trauma centers at Ben Taub General Hospital and Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston. Once shown to be successful there, the bone-regrowing technologies will be brought to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The research involves taking primitive stem cells from adult bone marrow, placing them on biodegradable scaffolding and chemically stimulating them. They can then be inserted in the body to facilitate growth or grown outside it, then implanted.
"In a way, it's akin to the early stages of research with penicillin — how much does it take to kill an infection, how much is too much," Wong said. "There's a lot of trial and error, a lot of experimentation."
More than 30 institutions are participating in the institute, which is divided into two consortia, one led by Wake Forest University and the University of Pittsburgh, the other by Rutgers University and the Cleveland Clinic. The institutions were selected by competitive peer review.
Funding comes from the Pentagon, members of the consortia and the National Institutes of Health.