.'Regenerative Medicine' Institute Eyes Limb, Tissue Regrowth for War Wounded
WASHINGTON -- In April 2003, in Baghdad, Army Specialist Garth Stewart stepped on a land mine. The blast blew off half his left leg. The next thing he knew, he was in a military hospital being prepped for the eventual fitting of a prosthesis.
Today, Stewart is a poster boy for the Army's latest generation of "intelligent" robotic limbs that move and flex like real limbs -- and adapt themselves to a wearer's unique gait. Prostheses have come a long way since the wooden peg leg, but in the future they might not be necessary at all. One military medical institute is working to grow new body parts from human and animal "seed" tissue.
The Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine -- an alliance of the military services, the Veterans Administration, the National Institutes of Health and around 250 doctors and researchers at 30 universities and hospitals -- formed in early 2007 with $50 million a year in government and private funding. Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army's top doctor, formally inaugurated the Institute at a Pentagon event on April 17.
This summer the institute will launch its first research programs, aiming to "put people back together" after nearly catastrophic injuries, according to Army Col. Robert Vandre, the Army's senior official for "combat casualty care research."
"Before we spent most of our budget on how keep soldiers alive after they've been wounded," Vandre told World Politics Review. "We had a little money for putting people back together, but not much."
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan changed all that. Tens of thousands of American soldiers and civilians have been injured in the wars, putting pressure on the military medical establishment to step up investment in so-called "battlefield medicine" and long-term patient care. Vandre has been at the forefront of many such efforts. Previously, he helped oversee the military introduction of new easy-to-apply tourniquets and clotting bandages infused with powderized shrimp shells.
Specific projects the new Regenerative Medicine Institute will support in coming years include efforts to grow "replacement parts" for damaged limbs and organs, using human and pig tissue cultures. These replacement parts might include new bone, muscle, skin, blood vessels and bits of organs. The Institute will also investigate ways of encouraging the human body to totally regrow lost limbs -- like a salamander -- starting with fingertips and, hopefully, working up to entire arms and legs.
Researchers across the planet have already looked into all of these techniques: None of them are brand new. But what is new is the institute's emphasis on bringing regenerative medicine to clinical trials, in order to get new methods into practice as soon as possible. In that way, the institute serves as a "bridge," Vandre says.
"The National Institutes of Health spend $500 million a year on tissue engineering research, stem cells and growth factors, but it's all pretty much basic research. You get a lot of [academic] papers out of it," Vandre explains. "The thing that's missing is to translate from basic research into [working with] people. . . . There are all these things in the lab, but none gets out to be an actual product. There's no funding to bridge the gap."
Even the roughly $50 million annually that the Institute will throw at the problem is fairly small change in light of the need, Vandre admits. He says he hopes a few successful regenerative projects -- scar prevention, for instance -- will draw in much larger private investment. "If we could do healing without scarring, can you imagine how much money that would be worth?"
But the institute's work isn't without potential pitfalls. Especially sticky is regenerative medicine's heavy reliance on stem cells -- those highly adaptive rudimentary cells that can be encouraged to develop into specialized organ cells. One major source of stem cells is human embryos. For this reason, in 2001, the Bush Administration moved to withhold federal funding for organizations using embryonic stem cells, except for work on a limited number of existing stem cells lines. In wealthy, liberal states such as California, there are thriving research organizations using embryonic stem cells that operate without federal funding, but elsewhere researchers tend to avoid fetal tissues. Instead, they "mine" much less flexible adult stem cells from patients.
The plus side of this method is that "using their own stem cells avoids the rejection problem," Vandre says. Still, embryonic stem cells are superior. One San Diego company is even experimenting with drug cocktails to trick adult stem cells into behaving like embryonic ones.
The stem cell debate notwithstanding, the new Institute is moving forward on "low-hanging fruit" -- projects that can make it from labs to trials in only a few years, according to Vandre. He says there are around a dozen good candidates for fast-tracking, including new methods for facial and hand reconstruction.
"The biggest challenge is going to be that most of these researchers are the big dogs, the main researchers at their schools," Vandre says. "They get plenty of money and they're used to calling the shots. Now they have to work as a team. It'll be like herding cats."
WPV
Lucky for all the vet's, Bush doesn't need the Christian right to be reelected, anymore.
Today, Stewart is a poster boy for the Army's latest generation of "intelligent" robotic limbs that move and flex like real limbs -- and adapt themselves to a wearer's unique gait. Prostheses have come a long way since the wooden peg leg, but in the future they might not be necessary at all. One military medical institute is working to grow new body parts from human and animal "seed" tissue.
The Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine -- an alliance of the military services, the Veterans Administration, the National Institutes of Health and around 250 doctors and researchers at 30 universities and hospitals -- formed in early 2007 with $50 million a year in government and private funding. Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army's top doctor, formally inaugurated the Institute at a Pentagon event on April 17.
This summer the institute will launch its first research programs, aiming to "put people back together" after nearly catastrophic injuries, according to Army Col. Robert Vandre, the Army's senior official for "combat casualty care research."
"Before we spent most of our budget on how keep soldiers alive after they've been wounded," Vandre told World Politics Review. "We had a little money for putting people back together, but not much."
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan changed all that. Tens of thousands of American soldiers and civilians have been injured in the wars, putting pressure on the military medical establishment to step up investment in so-called "battlefield medicine" and long-term patient care. Vandre has been at the forefront of many such efforts. Previously, he helped oversee the military introduction of new easy-to-apply tourniquets and clotting bandages infused with powderized shrimp shells.
Specific projects the new Regenerative Medicine Institute will support in coming years include efforts to grow "replacement parts" for damaged limbs and organs, using human and pig tissue cultures. These replacement parts might include new bone, muscle, skin, blood vessels and bits of organs. The Institute will also investigate ways of encouraging the human body to totally regrow lost limbs -- like a salamander -- starting with fingertips and, hopefully, working up to entire arms and legs.
Researchers across the planet have already looked into all of these techniques: None of them are brand new. But what is new is the institute's emphasis on bringing regenerative medicine to clinical trials, in order to get new methods into practice as soon as possible. In that way, the institute serves as a "bridge," Vandre says.
"The National Institutes of Health spend $500 million a year on tissue engineering research, stem cells and growth factors, but it's all pretty much basic research. You get a lot of [academic] papers out of it," Vandre explains. "The thing that's missing is to translate from basic research into [working with] people. . . . There are all these things in the lab, but none gets out to be an actual product. There's no funding to bridge the gap."
Even the roughly $50 million annually that the Institute will throw at the problem is fairly small change in light of the need, Vandre admits. He says he hopes a few successful regenerative projects -- scar prevention, for instance -- will draw in much larger private investment. "If we could do healing without scarring, can you imagine how much money that would be worth?"
But the institute's work isn't without potential pitfalls. Especially sticky is regenerative medicine's heavy reliance on stem cells -- those highly adaptive rudimentary cells that can be encouraged to develop into specialized organ cells. One major source of stem cells is human embryos. For this reason, in 2001, the Bush Administration moved to withhold federal funding for organizations using embryonic stem cells, except for work on a limited number of existing stem cells lines. In wealthy, liberal states such as California, there are thriving research organizations using embryonic stem cells that operate without federal funding, but elsewhere researchers tend to avoid fetal tissues. Instead, they "mine" much less flexible adult stem cells from patients.
The plus side of this method is that "using their own stem cells avoids the rejection problem," Vandre says. Still, embryonic stem cells are superior. One San Diego company is even experimenting with drug cocktails to trick adult stem cells into behaving like embryonic ones.
The stem cell debate notwithstanding, the new Institute is moving forward on "low-hanging fruit" -- projects that can make it from labs to trials in only a few years, according to Vandre. He says there are around a dozen good candidates for fast-tracking, including new methods for facial and hand reconstruction.
"The biggest challenge is going to be that most of these researchers are the big dogs, the main researchers at their schools," Vandre says. "They get plenty of money and they're used to calling the shots. Now they have to work as a team. It'll be like herding cats."
WPV
Lucky for all the vet's, Bush doesn't need the Christian right to be reelected, anymore.
posted by madtom at 10:00 PM
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