Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine will lead $20 million project – Winston-Salem Journal

The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and a nonprofit it founded will undertake a five-year, $20 million project to apply advanced manufacturing to regenerative medicine, a process that will speed up the availability of replacement tissues and organs to patients.

Dr. Anthony Atala, the institutes director, talked about the project Friday during a program celebrating its launch at the institutes Biotech Place Atrium at 575 N. Patterson Ave. in downtown Winston-Salem. About 100 people attended the event.

A public-private partnership that involves the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command awarded the project, the institute said in a statement. The partnership, known as the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium, awarded $10 million for projects that the Wake Forest institute will perform.

The institute has founded a nonprofit organization to conduct research to advance regenerative medicine manufacturing, the RegenMed Development Organization, which also is the recipient of a $10 million award from the consortium.

Today, we are launching this program of manufacturing to bring regenerative technologies to a broader audience, Atala said to reporters before the program started. We have been working on these projects in regenerative medicine for a number of years.

Now, this is basically a way to accelerate the manufacturing of these technologies to automate the process here. The goal is to stop making these systems by hand one at a time, but to automate the process, so we can scale it up and make the process more affordable so we can get it to patients faster.

The institute, which has 450 scientists collaborating on regenerative medicine research, will focus on two aspects of the project, Atala said. One is to develop standardized bioinks, which is what we use for our printing system. They are biological inks to allow us print tissues, he said.

Researchers with the institute use printers to apply living cells onto biodegradable structures that allow for tissue regeneration inside the body.

For us, at the end of the day this is about one thing how we can best deliver these technologies to our patients, Atala said.

The institute also will focus on developing standardized cell culture media liquids that support cell growth. These products are used in most regenerative medicine projects because of the billions of cells that must be grown for each patient, the institute said in a statement.

We have been spending many years now working on technologies that we re-create tissues and organs in laboratories, and weve been putting these tissues into our patients, Atala said. Now, the next step is how we can we manufacture these tissues on a large scale and provide these tissues to patients all over the country and all over the world.

During the program, retired Army Maj. Gen. Lester Martinez-Lopez told the audience that developing regenerative medicine with advanced manufacturing will help injured U.S. military personnel.

We are going to speed up the production process, said Martinez-Lopez, the president and chairman of the MTEC board. Its about delivering (tissues and organs) to that soldier, sailor, airman and Marine. Thats a big deal.

Doug Edgeton, the president and chief executive of the N.C. Biotechnology Center, said the project will add to the economic base of the Triad and North Carolina. The states life science industry represents $86 billion yearly in economic activity in North Carolina and $2.2 billion in state and local tax revenue, he said.

You all are doing a lot of good things here, Edgeton said to the audience.

After the program, Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines said the institutes project will generate jobs locally.

I can see companies coming in and creating jobs and creating jobs within the institute itself, Joines said. It will be a huge impact.

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Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine will lead $20 million project - Winston-Salem Journal