PI Alan J. Russell, PhD and Anthony Atala, MD
Title Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine
Summary The University of Pittsburgh’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have been selected as co-leaders of a national $85 million program to use the science of regenerative medicine to develop new treatments for wounded soldiers.
A new federally funded institution – the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM) – will be made up of the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research and consortia involving the McGowan-Wake Forest team and another led by Rutgers and the Cleveland Clinic. Each group was awarded $42.5 million. The Wake Forest-McGowan team includes collaborators from 15 other institutions.
AFIRM will be co-directed by Alan J. Russell, Ph.D., director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and Anthony Atala, M.D., director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The massive project 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 also will benefit people in the civilian population with burns or severe trauma due to illness or injury.
The McGowan and Wake Forest team has committed to develop clinical therapies over the next five years that will focus on:
- 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.
Source Department of Defense
Term 2008-2013
Amount $42.5 million