Two of the state's leading medical-research groups said Thursday that they have formed a partnership in the hope of advancing regenerative-medicine treatments for humans and animals.
The partnership is between Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and N.C. State University. The cooperating units will be Wake Forest Baptist's Institute for Regenerative Medicine and NCSU's Center for Comparative Medicine and Translational Research.
The groups will exchange students and faculty, as well as collaborate on research projects and publications, and pool resources "to find safe and effective ways to use stem cells to regenerate damaged organs in people and pets."
The goal is "developing advanced treatments for companion animals, as well as accelerating new regenerative-medicine therapies for humans," said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest institute.
The Wake Forest institute uses amniotic stem cells, induced pluripotent cells and stem cells gathered from the patient's own skin and organs. Induced pluripotent cells are adult cells that are reverted genetically to take on the properties of embryonic stem cells. Many scientists believe the transformed cells have the same properties as embryonic stem cells.
"We believe this partnership can play a major role by bringing together the collective expertise of the two medical-research groups," said Dr. Jorge Piedrahita, a genomics professor at NCSU and the center's interim director.
Piedrahita said NCSU brings bioengineering and textiles research into the partnership, such as manufacturing that includes building bioreactors and fabrics that speed up the healing of tissue.
Although Piedrahita said dogs may be able to benefit from the collaborative research in the next two years, he cautioned it could be six to eight years before the research reaches the clinical-trial stage for humans.
The groups will meet in early December to further discuss how to pair researchers and scientists and determine which products to pursue initially.
Piedrahita said the study of diseased organs in animals "is critically useful for advances in human medicine as these animals share our environment and the vast majority of our genes."
On the flip side, bladder tissue regeneration research for humans at the Wake Forest institute has applications in animals.
The Wake Forest institute has more than 250 scientists in the fields of biomedical and chemical engineering, cell and molecular biology, biochemistry, pharmacology, physiology, materials science, nanotechnology, genomics, proteomics, surgery and medicine work.
The NCSU center has more than 100 scientists that collaborate in studies with government, private and academic researchers.
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