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BRIDGING THE GAP VIRGINIA TECH WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY ENGINEERING, SCIENCE, School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences & MEDICINE SBES NEWS S U M M E R / F A L L 2 0 0 8 • W W W . S B E S . V T . E D U SBES Is At The Forefront Of Regenerative Medicine What is Regenerative Medicine? from United Network for Organ Sharing, 4/29/08. The main thrust of regenerative medicine is to harness the The prevalence of obesity, hypertension and diabetes, and the natural healing process by helping cells to grow, divide and dif- growing numbers among the aging population will likely increase ferentiate outside of the body before implantation, or by stimulating the need for organs for years to come. Then there are the complica- progenitor cells to repair tissues in the body. tions of the actual transplant; rejections and medications. Immuno- Why Regenerative Medicine? suppressing medications become a lifelong need and carry both Since the first organ transplant in 1954, there have been few short and long-term side effects that can reduce the quality and life clinical advances. Organ transplantation was a major advance in span of patients. medicine in the twentieth century but demand for transplantable Where will the organs come from? organs consistently outstrips supply. Every Regenerative medicine can bypass the organ shortage and 11 minutes, a name is added to the the transplant complications by making the donor and the recipient national transplant wait- the same. A biopsy from the patient yields cells that are nurtured ing list, and more in the laboratory to form functional tissues and organs which can than 97,014 then be reimplanted into the patient. The use of a patient’s own people cur- cells eliminates the risk of rejection that accompanies traditional rently await organ transplantation so that immune system-altering drugs are not transplants. necessary. An aver- Wake Forest’s role in new technology commercialization age of 18 Children and teenagers, who have received laboratory grown people bladders using their own cells, have experienced success. Dr. die each Anthony Atala, at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine day while (WFIRM), implanted the first laboratory-grown bladder in 1999, waiting for and in April 2006 released a report discussing the long-term results organs, of seven patients who had the surgery. Tengion is a regenerative according medicine company which is commercializing this technology and to statistics has already entered phase II clinical trials. Where discovery and hope meet In January 2007 scientists from the WFIRM and Harvard Medical School discovered a new source of stem cells and have used them to create muscle, bone, fat, blood vessel, nerve and liver cells in the laboratory. Atala and colleagues discovered a small amount of stem cells in the amniotic fluid — estimated at one percent — which can give rise to many of the specialized cell types found in the human body. These stem cells are called amniotic fluid-derived stem (AFS) cells, and it took seven years of work to determine if they were true stem cells. These cells were harvested from amniotic fluid taken during routine amniocentesis procedures and similar cells were isolated from the placenta or “afterbirth.” This breakthrough may provide alternative cells to those isolated from embryos. Functional tests of AFS cells transplanted into mice have been successful, such as injection of neural cells created from AFS into mice with degenerative brain disease. The cells grew and “re-populated” the diseased areas. Many scientists believe stem cells have the potential to replace damaged cells and tissue in conditions such as spinal cord injuries, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. See Forefront, page 6 A tissue engineering scaffold made from liver is injected with a red dye. Cells are removed from the liver but the ul- trastructure of the extracellular matrix is left intact, so much so that the vascular network is visible as the dye travels through the vessels. This scaffold can be re-populated with cells and new tissue created with a built-in vascular supply. VIRGINIA TECH WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences 2 WWW.SBES.VT.EDU LOOKING TO THE FUTURE Producing the Next Generation of Biomedical Engineers he Virginia Tech – Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering our academic research program.” SBES has brought talented individuals/ and Sciences (SBES) strives to meet today’s technological and ac- researchers together, and we are seeing their work now as stepping- T ademic needs by preparing students to anticipate the future of the stones for future innovation. For example, in April 2008 successful clinical biomedical field. This unique school was established by bringing together trials were completed in irreversible electroporation (IRE), based on a the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, the Virginia Tech College paper published in 2005 by Rafael Davalos, Ph.D. IRE is a proven method of Engineering, and the Virginia – Maryland Regional College of Veteri- for tumor ablation that creates no secondary thermal effects and therefore nary Medicine, combining the resources and leveraging the strengths of preserves the extracellular matrix, microvasculature, and nerves. these founding members to produce an environment that fosters graduate The combination of a public university from Virginia with recognized education and outstanding interdisciplinary research. Each college is in- excellence in engineering and veterinary medicine and a private univer- ternationally recognized, and SBES combines researchers and resources sity in North Carolina with recognized excellence in human medicine has into a coherent group. resulted in a program that is much more than the sum of its parts. Re- According to Dean Richard Benson of the Virginia Tech College of cently the Global Human Body Modeling Consortium awarded the Center Engineering, “The creation of SBES — a dynamic and collegial depart- for Injury Biomechanics (CIB) $4.9 million, and the Wake Forest Institute ment that resides in three colleges at two universities — is the most for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM), where many of our students and interesting academic partnership that I have witnessed in three decades faculty are involved in tissue engineering, has been awarded $42.5 mil- of university life. Our partnership with the Wake Forest University School lion from the U.S. Department of Defense as part of a joint consortium. of Medicine and the Virginia – Maryland Regional College of Veterinary I invite you to read about these and many other initiatives and success Medicine has brought tremendous opportunities for biomedical engineer- stories in this newsletter. I think you will agree with Dr. Wayne Meredith, ing research and education to the Virginia Tech College of Engineering.” director of the Division of Surgical Sciences at Wake Forest University The school has made significant achievements in academics, in re- School of Medicine, that “SBES is one of the most exciting and stimulat- search with increased funding, and in professional growth by securing bril- ing ventures of our schools. I am constantly amazed and inspired by liant faculty members who are leading us into the future. Ge Wang, Ph.D., the unique inquisitive environment it creates and the productivity of the is an excellent example. He is the Samuel Reynolds Pritchard Professor research that results.” It is with this attitude that we will continue to chart of Engineering, the director of the SBES Biomedical Imaging Division, our course. and a joint faculty member at Virginia Tech and Wake Forest. Among his ~ by Wally Grant, Ph.D., Head, Virginia Tech - Wake Forest University many honors and contributions, Dr. Wang and his collaborators published School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences (SBES) the first papers on spiral cone-beam CT, biolumi- nescence tomography, Haiou Shen, Dr. Ge Wang’s and interior tomography, postdoctoral fellow, is prototyping each of which represents a state of the art optical molecular a frontier of biomedical tomography system. imaging. As I review the short-term success of SBES, I believe we are now strategically posi- tioned to be a leader in a unique academic program and to continue to de- velop as an internationally recognized educational and research biomedical engineering program. William Applegate, Ph.D., interim president of Wake Forest University Health Sciences and dean of the School of Medicine, states that “SBES is the “Jewel in the Crown” of VIRGINIA TECH WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences WWW.SBES.VT.EDU 3 HEART FAILURE... Over 70 million people in the United the left ventricular filling hydrodynamics and students headed by Dr. Pavlos Vlachos have States with high blood pressure are at risk for diastolic heart failure. It will enable the devel- been investigating how the blood flow in simu- left ventricular diastolic dysfunction (LVDD), opment of novel and more reliable diagnostic lated coronary arteries changes after stent and numerous studies have shown a link be- tools. This work will be presented at the 2008 implantation based on the choice of design. tween LVDD and heart failure. However, due ASME Summer Bio- AEThER has begun to compensatory mechanisms, early stage engineering Confer- efforts to characterize dysfunction can be difficult to diagnose, and ence. Also, a portion the parameters which despite numerous advances in clinical modali- of this work will con- govern magnetic drug ties the prognosis and diagnosis of LVDD has tribute to Kelly Stew- targeting. remained unchanged over the past 20 years. art’s master’s thesis For additional The Advanced Experimental Thermo-Flu- and will be part of the information, please ids Engineering Research (AEThER) fluid me- Ph.D. dissertation for see www.me.vt.edu/ chanics laboratory at Virginia Tech, in conjunc- John Charonko. AEThER/index.html tion with a team of cardiologists headed by The AEThER Dr. William Little from Wake Forest University Laboratory is focus- Baptist Medical Center, has been investigat- ing on other health ing the role of hydrodynamics in LVDD.