Tissue regeneration: Hope for injured vets?

[unhappycamper]

Tissue regeneration: Hope for injured vets?
By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Apr 17, 2008 18:06:02 EDT

In future years, troops who have lost body parts, often from the blast injuries so common in Iraq and Afghanistan, may actually be able to grow them anew — using their own stem cells.

More than 1,000 troops have endured amputations due to war injuries, and many others have been badly burned, or suffered spinal cord injuries or vision loss.

The new Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine will seek ways to regenerate replacement body parts and “make our soldiers whole again,” as Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general, put it at a Thursday news conference at the Pentagon.

The $250 million effort will be led by two multi-institutional consortia of university researchers who will work with the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research to develop and conduct clinical trials over the next five years. The teams will be led by Wake Forest University and the University of Pittsburgh and, separately, Rutgers University and the Cleveland Clinic.

Schoomaker called it a “dream team of some of the greatest minds in tissue engineering.”


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/04/military_regenerative_medicine_042808w/