Dr. Anthony Atala, M.D., and his team of researchers at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center are sharing a $42.5 million five-year Pentagon grant to develop futuristic battle-wound treatments that could bring instant spray-on skin cells for quick burn repair, organ replacements grown from a soldier's own damaged ones, and possibly even regenerated limbs, faces and other body parts.
The Wake Forest group will co-lead one of two academic groups that will form the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM). The consortia, working with the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research, will use the science of regenerative medicine to develop new treatments for wounded soldiers.
The Wake Forest-led collaboration will be headed by Atala, director of the Wake Forest institute, and Alan Russell, Ph.D., director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. A second consortium will be managed by Rutgers and the Cleveland Clinic.
AFIRM will be dedicated to repairing battlefield injuries through the use of regenerative medicine, science that takes advantage of the body's natural healing powers to restore or replace damaged tissue and organs. Therapies developed by AFIRM will also benefit civilians with burns or severe trauma.