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MGH joins consortium pursuing innovative
healing for war wounded
U.S. Army funds new Institute
of Regenerative Medicine with $85 million
BOSTON - April 17, 2008 - The Massachusetts General Hospital
(MGH) is participating in a new consortium that has been awarded
$42.5 million over five years to create one of two academic groups
that will form the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine
(AFIRM).
MGH is part of the group to be led by Rutgers
University and headed by Joachim Kohn, PhD, Board of Governors
Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in Rutgers' School of
Arts and Sciences, and George Muschler, MD, an orthopedic surgeon
at the Cleveland
Clinic. A second consortium will be managed by Wake
Forest University Baptist Medical Center and the University
of Pittsburgh, with another $42.5 million in funding.
The U.S. Army
Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) - in conjunction
with the Office of Naval Research, the National Institutes of Health,
the Air Force Office of the Surgeon General and the Department of
Veterans Affairs - will fund the two consortia.
The use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan
has caused a marked increase in severe blast trauma, now responsible
for approximately 75 percent of all injuries, according to the Journal
of Orthopaedic Trauma. Because of better body armor, quicker
evacuation from the battlefield and advanced medical care, many
of the injured survive to face the challenge of overcoming severe
limb, head, face and burn injuries that can take years to treat
and usually result in significant lifelong impairment.
The new institute is a strong national effort to address the unprecedented
challenges of caring for men and women returning from Afghanistan
and Iraq with multiple traumatic injuries. "Together, we are
single-mindedly focused on the critical issue of alleviating the
suffering of our severely injured veterans and improving the quality
of their lives," said Cathryn Sundback, PhD, Associate Director
of the Laboratory
of Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication in the MGH
Center for Regenerative Medicine.
AFIRM will develop new products and therapies for the repair of
battlefield injuries through the use of regenerative medicine. This
innovative approach employs biological therapy - including stem
cells and growth factors, tissue and biomaterials engineering, and
transplants - to enable the body to repair, replace, restore and
regenerate damaged tissues and organs.
The institute also will dramatically accelerate the rate at which
promising biomaterials, cell-based, and combined regenerative medicine
technologies will be converted into new therapies to restore lost
tissue and function. These products and therapies will also serve
civilian trauma and burn patients.
MGH activities associated with the institute will receive $700,000
per year for five years, supplemented over the first two years by
an additional $313,000 per year from the Center for Military Biomaterials
Research (CeMBR).
"We are excited to be a member of this strong academic, industrial,
and military team to address critical issues in the filed of regenerative
medicine," said Sundback, who along with Joseph Vacanti, MD,
Director of the MGH Laboratory of Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication,
is an AFIRM project leader. "Our local team consists of key
clinicians and researchers here at the Massachusetts General Hospital
as well as at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Our collective
mission is to develop novel regenerative medicine technologies and
rapidly translate these and existing approaches into practical clinical
solutions for our injured veterans." Sundback is an Instructor
in Surgery and Vacanti is John Homans Professor of Surgery at Harvard
Medical School.
The Rutgers-led consortium will be based on a highly integrated,
open network of dedicated partners comprising 15 premier academic
institutions and more than 20 leading companies. Most of the partners
in the consortium have been professional colleagues for years with
longstanding collaborations. The open-network approach ensures that
the most qualified experts and performance sites, irrespective of
their institutional affiliation or geographic location, will be
within reach. An executive committee will direct the research programs
of the geographically dispersed network of leading academic research
scientists and clinicians, industrial scientists and business managers,
and military medical experts.
In addition to the Rutgers and the Wake Forest-based groups, there
will be a third component. The U.S.
Army Institute of Surgical Research in San Antonio, Texas, will
work with the two academic consortia to provide guidance on military
medical needs and hosting trials of new therapies.
In addition to MGH, the core academic partners are: the New Jersey
Center for Biomaterials at Rutgers University, the National Center
for Regenerative Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western
Reserve University, Carnegie Mellon University, Stony Brook University,
Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Mayo
Clinic, Northwestern University, University of Cincinnati, University
of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, University of Pennsylvania,
University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University. These core partners
are supported by a large number of industrial collaborators and
participating health care companies that have expressed an interest
in the commercialization of new products and therapies emerging
from institute's research program.
Massachusetts General Hospital, established in 1811, is the original
and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH
conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United
States, with an annual research budget of more than $500 million
and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer,
computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human
genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative
medicine, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine.
MGH and Brigham and Women's Hospital are founding members of Partners
HealthCare HealthCare System, a Boston-based integrated health care
delivery system.
Media Contacts: Valerie
Wencis, MGH Public Affairs
Physician Referral Service: 1-800-388-4644
Information about Clinical Trials
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