PRIVATE, CORPORATE AND INDUSTRIAL COLLABORATIONS

The driving mandate of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is to bring new technologies to the clinic safely and rapidly. The Institute combines aggressive innovation in academic medicine and entrepreneurial technology transfer to create and develop applications that promote health by replacing or repairing tissues and organs damaged by disease, trauma, or congenital conditions. As a leader in translational research, the Institute actively seeks out partnerships with companies in the biotechnology industry.

Previous successful alliances with industry have resulted in more than 11 technologies reaching the clinical testing stage, with many others currently in pre-clinical testing.

The Institute's research programs span the key areas essential to Regenerative Medicine:

• Tissue Engineering
• Cellular Therapy
• Molecular Therapy
• Stem Cells
• Drug Delivery
• Biomaterials
• Nanotechnology
• Cell/Tissue Physiology
• Systems Biology
  
  

All of the regenerative medicine research programs are structured to address real world medical problems. The approach is to mobilize within the Institute all of the resources and expertise needed to create innovative technological solutions, refine them in preclinical models of disease, and carry out first-in-man studies. Once initial evidence for safety and efficacy has been obtained, scientists work closely with corporate partners to facilitate further preclinical development, scale-up and the extensive clinical studies required for regulatory approval.

The complex problem of regenerating tissues and organs demands the application of skills from many disciplines. The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine functions as an integrated team that includes clinically trained physicians, basic scientists and engineers. In contrast to the territorial "silos" typical of many academic settings, the Institute's faculty, fellows, and graduate students work in a cooperative environment that can be fairly described as a "Laboratory without Walls." The team also benefits from an extensive collaborative network within Wake Forest, in the inter-institutional Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering, and around the world.

"As a leader in translational research, the Institute actively seeks out partnerships with companies in the biotechnology industry."

Corporate Partners

Important corporate alliances involving sponsored research agreements for the development of the Institute's technologies already have been announced. Others are under active discussion, while multiple opportunities remain open. The Institute's industrial partners include:

Tengion is the Institute's initial corporate partner for the clinical advancement of its core technologies in tissue engineering, primarily in the fields of the genitourinary system and blood vessels. An agreement between Tengion and the Institute was announced on January 9, 2006 (click here for press release). The partnered program focuses on the development of neo-organs and neo-tissues generated from each patient's own (autologous) cells. The use of autologous cells makes it unnecessary to use immunosuppressive drugs to repress rejection, as would be required in conventional organ transplantation. To create a neo-organ or neo-tissue, a small amount of the patient's tissue is obtained by biopsy, and progenitors of the desired specialized cell types are recovered and expanded in culture. The cells are then seeded onto a bioresorbable scaffold which provides shape and structure. The neo-organ is surgically implanted into the patient, and the seeded cells continue to grow and differentiate while the scaffold gradually dissolves away. Over time the regenerated organ or tissue acquires increasingly normal form and function. A major goal of the collaboration is the clinical development of neo-organs for patients with defects in the urinary bladder.

Plureon Corporation has licensed key technology utilizing a novel class of pluripotent stem cell that derives from pregnancy. These cells can be isolated harmlessly from routine prenatal specimens used for genetic testing (obtained by amniocentesis) or from the placenta at the time of birth. Plureon is developing the cells for therapeutic and drug discovery applications internally, through sponsored research at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and through alliances with major biopharmaceutical companies, including Cryo-Cell and BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company). Based on inventions by Institute scientists, Plureon also has been awarded Phase 1 and Phase 2 SBIR grants from the US Army to develop a keratin bioceramic antibiotic putty for bone regeneration.

Cryo-Cell International, Inc. is the world's largest private bank for umbilical cord blood. The Company has signed an agreement with Plureon to offer parents of newborn children the opportunity to collect and preserve, in addition to cord blood, the novel fetal stem cells currently under intensive study by Institute scientists.

Becton, Dickinson & Company, a leading medical technology company, has entered into an agreement with Plureon to develop the pluripotent fetal stem cells for treatment of diabetes. (News here) The program will be carried out in close collaboration with scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine through a sponsored research agreement. Institute scientists have shown that fetal stem cells obtained from amniotic fluid can be induced to produce insulin-producing cells similar to pancreatic beta-cells. These cells are deficient in patients with juvenile diabetes (type 1 or "juvenile" diabetes). In an experimental model of the disease, injection of these stem cells, primed by introduction of a pancreatic master gene, restored normal production of insulin and regulation of blood glucose levels.

A complete list of many of our collaborative partners is included in this section. Please select the type of partnership you wish to learn more about below.

Intramural Collaborations
Extramural/Academic Collaborations

Private, Corporate, Industrial Partners/Collaborators:
A significant quantity of Institute resources are funded through a variety of private foundations and corporate entities.

Acell (www.acell.com/vet.htm)
Advanced Cell Technology (www.advancedcell.com)
AGI Dermatics, Inc. (www.agiderm.com)
AlphaMed Press (www.StemCellsPortal.com)
ALZA (www.ALZA.com)
Amaxa, Inc. (www.biospace.com/company_profile.aspx?CompanyID=390204)
American Medical Systems (AMS) (www.americanmedicalsystems.com)
Arie & Ida Crown Memorial Becton Dickenson (BD) (www.bd.com)
BioSante (www.biosantepharma.com)
Boston Scientific (www.bostonscientific.com)
Cryo-Cell International, Inc. (www.cryo-cell.com)
DMT, Inc. (www.dmt.dk)
Fisher Scientific (www.fisherscientific.com)
Foster-Miller (www.foster-miller.com)
Frase Foundation (www.joshuafrase.org)
Invitrogen Corportation (www.invitrogen.com)
Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) (www.jdrf.org)
Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation (www.mtf.org)
NanoTechLabs Inc. (www.nanotechlabs.com)
Pfizer (www.pfizer.com)
Plureon (www.plureon.com)
Sciperio (www.sciperio.com)
Stemnion (www.stemnion.com)
Stovall Life Sciences, Inc. (www.slscience.com)
Tengion (www.tengion.com)
VWR International, Inc. (www.vwr.com)