In 2019, the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory formed a research partnership with the University of Pittsburgh’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) has named 63 of the world’s best emerging academic inventors to its 2021 class of Senior Members. Three of those honorees are McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty members (pictured top to bottom):
Pediatric laryngotracheal stenosis (LTS), a narrowing of the airway in children, is a complex medical condition. While it can be something a child is born with or caused by injury, the condition can result in a life-threatening emergency if untreated. Treatment, however, is challenging. Depending on the severity, doctors will use a combination of endoscopic techniques, surgical repair, tracheostomy, or deployment of stents to hold the airway open and enable breathing.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have combined synthetic biology with a machine-learning algorithm to create human liver organoids with blood- and bile-handling systems. When implanted into mice with failing livers, the lab-grown replacement livers extended life.
UPMC and University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine physician-scientists—including McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Derek Angus, MD, MPH, UPMC chief healthcare innovation officer, chair of the UPP Department of Critical Care Medicine and physician director of the UPMC ICU Service Center, University of Pittsburgh’s inaugural associate vice chancellor for health care innovation, and Distinguished Professor and the Mitchell P. Fink Endowed Chair in Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine—contributed to a national study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reporting findings that “do not support” the use of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of adult patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
Approximately 85% of late-stage clinical trials of candidate drugs fail because of drug safety problems or ineffectiveness, despite promising preclinical test results. To help improve the design and implementation of clinical trials, the National Institutes of Health has awarded 10 grants to support researchers’ efforts in using tiny, bioengineered models of human tissues and organ systems to study diseases and test drugs. One major goal of the funded projects is to develop ways to better predict which patients are most likely to benefit from an investigational therapy prior to initiating clinical trials. McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Alejandro Soto-Gutierrez, MD, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh and an affiliated faculty member of the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, is a co-principal investigator on one of the 10 recently funded projects.
A multi-institute collaboration including the University of Pittsburgh received more than $31 million by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) to study regenerative therapies and to improve patient care by providing solutions for the unmet clinical problems in dental, oral, and craniofacial medicine.
Hepatocytes — the chief functional cells of the liver — are natural regenerators, and the lymph nodes serve as a nurturing place where they can multiply. In a new study published in the journal Liver Transplantation, researchers in the Lagasse Laboratory showed that large animals with ailing livers can grow a new organ in their lymph nodes from their own hepatocytes. A human clinical trial is next.
NIH awarded The Alliance for Regenerative Rehabilitation Research and Training (AR3T) a 5-year renewal of the AR3T grant totaling $5,010,083. AR3T was one of six resource centers selected for this funding, all of which are a part of the Medical Rehabilitation Research Resource (MR3) Network.
Using skin cells from human volunteers, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have created fully functional mini livers, which they then transplanted into rats.
A respiratory dialysis system that employs technologies developed at the McGowan Institute Medical Devices Lab has been used to treat 16 COVID-19 patients, in conjunction with non-invasive or mechanical ventilation. The core technology developed at the Medical Devices Lab, was licensed to the spinout ALung Technologies, and ALung has designed and produced a clinically viable device, which is called the Hemolung® Respiratory Assist System (RAS).
Under the direction of McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine faculty member William Federspiel, PhD, the William Kepler Whiteford Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh, the Institute’s Medical Devices Laboratory is developing clinically significant devices for the treatment of pulmonary and other cardiovascular ailments by utilizing the engineering principles of fluid flow and mass transfer.
