The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine has formed an international partnership that holds promise for accelerating the pace of developing therapies for patients.
The collaboration is with Tokyo Women's Medical University and its Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science. It also involves a researcher from the Shanghai Tissue Engineering Center at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine.
Each institute has successfully developed clinical therapies and technologies that have been licensed by companies. They also receive major funding from their respective governments for research and development programs.
"Because the need for new therapies knows no boundaries, we are committed to partnering with scientists from around the world to solve tough challenges and make advances to benefit patients," said Dr. Anthony Atala, the director of the Wake Forest institute.
Leading the collaborative effort for the Shanghai medical school is Dr. Yilin Cao. Heading the effort for the Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science is Teruo Okano.
The announcement was made during the first of the two-day Translational Regenerative Medicine Forum at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Winston-Salem. The forum, which is closed to the public, features more than 400 participants, 10 panels and three keynote speakers.
Regenerative medicine involves using a person's own cells to heal and regenerative tissue and organs. Researchers also have high hopes of being able to apply the cells in a preventive manner to keep organs from reaching a 90 percent failure rate.
Researchers at the Wake Forest institute were the first in the world to implant laboratory-engineered organs into patients. They are working to engineer more than 22 different organs and tissues in the lab and develop cell therapies to restore organ function.
The Shanghai Tissue Engineering Center is recognized for its developments in musculoskeletal regenerative medicine. It has products and technologies in clinical trials regarding the regeneration of tissues for orthopedics and cranio-maxillofacial medicine.
The Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science has developed a technology to engineer sheets of cells in the laboratory that can be transplanted into diseased areas for the restoration of tissues and organs. The technology is being evaluated in clinical trials in Europe for regenerating cornea tissue.
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