Scientists at McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine are partnering with innovators at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine to advance healing techniques and technologies for animals and humans.
Gum Disease Treated by Using Homing Beacon to Bring Needed Immune Cells to Inflamed Area
The red, swollen, and painful gums and bone destruction of periodontal disease could be effectively treated by beckoning the right kind of immune system cells to the inflamed tissues, according to a new pre-clinical study conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, including McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine faculty members Steven Little, PhD, associate professor and chair of the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, and Charles Sfeir, DDS, PhD, director, Center for Craniofacial Regeneration, and associate professor, Departments of Periodontics and Oral Biology, Pitt’s School of Dental Medicine. Their findings, published in the early online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offer a new therapeutic paradigm for a condition that afflicts 78 million people in the U.S. alone.
The Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM) will continue its efforts to apply the latest in tissue engineering and other regenerative medicine techniques to the treatment of battlefield injuries in a $75 million, 5-year second phase.
A Pittsburgh-based team, that includes two McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty members, has reported that they have performed a study where a mouse heart was able to contract and beat again after its own cells were stripped and replaced with human heart precursor cells. The McGowan Institute affiliated faculty members who were contributors to the study are Kimimasa Tobita, MD, research assistant, professor of developmental biology, pediatrics, and bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh and a director of Rangos Research Center Animal Imaging Core, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, and Guy Salama, PhD, professor within the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, along with scientists from Pitt School of Medicine. The findings, reported online in Nature Communications, show the promise that regenerating a functional organ by placing human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells – which could be personalized for the recipient – in a three-dimensional scaffold could have for transplantation, drug testing models, and understanding heart development.
The interior of a living cell is a crowded place, with proteins and other macromolecules packed tightly together. A team of scientists at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), including McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Philip LeDuc, PhD, CMU professor of mechanical engineering and biological sciences, has approximated this molecular crowding in an artificial cellular system and found that tight quarters help the process of gene expression, especially when other conditions are less than ideal.
McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine director William Wagner, PhD is the recipient of the 2013 Senior Scientist Award presented by the Tissue Engineering Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS-AM).
The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), awarded Qrono Inc. a Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I grant for $256,000 to improve the treatment options for wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD) and fund further development of the company’s predictive modeling technology for the design of long-acting injectable (LAI) drug formulations. The research will be conducted in collaboration with The Little Lab at the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh.
In a paper presented at the American Transplant Congress, Seattle, WA (May 20, 2013), McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Paulo Fontes, MD, associate professor of surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, described the ground breaking results from a study conducted by a multidisciplinary team who designed and assessed the effectiveness of a system to oxygenate harvested livers with a perfusion system so that the condition of the liver can be maintained for an extended period before implantation.
April 2013 | VOL. 12, NO. 4 | www.McGowan.pitt.edu
Researchers are moving toward the production of an adipose stem-cell based vascular graft for bypass patients, thanks to a new R21 grant from the National Institutes of Health.
March 2013 | VOL. 12, NO. 3 | www.McGowan.pitt.edu
The McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine held its 2013 Scientific Retreat March 7-10, 2013. The focus was on peer-to-peer networking, and the retreat provided many opportunities to explore collaborative endeavors with other researchers, participating guests, and external partners who are working to bring regenerative medicine technologies to clinical use.
McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine faculty member Yadong Wang, PhD, associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh, has led a study that resulted in demonstrating the feasibility of growing arteries with elasticity outside the body, which are the closest to resembling natural blood vessels.
January 2013 | VOL. 12, NO. 1 | www.McGowan.pitt.edu
The Carnegie Science Center established the Awards for Excellence program in 1997 to recognize and promote outstanding science and technology achievements in Western Pennsylvania. The Carnegie Science Awards have honored the accomplishments of more than 350 committed individuals and organizations that have improved lives through their contributions in science and technology. Award winners were announced on January 30, 2013. On May 3, 2013, at the Carnegie Music Hall the following McGowan affiliated faculty and trainees will be honored for their tremendous work and its impact on the vitality in the region:
