The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) is a research institute affiliated with

Wake Forest School of Medicine Wake Forest University School of Medicine is the medical school of Wake Forest University, with two campuses located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. It is affiliated with Atrium Health Wake Forest B ...

and located in

Winston-Salem Winston-Salem is a city and the county seat of Forsyth County, North Carolina, United States. In the 2020 census, the population was 249,545, making it the second-largest municipality in the Piedmont Triad region, the 5th most populous city in ...

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

WFIRM's goal is to apply the principles of

regenerative medicine Regenerative medicine deals with the "process of replacing, engineering or regenerating human or animal cells, tissues or organs to restore or establish normal function". This field holds the promise of engineering damaged tissues and organs by st ...

to repair or replace diseased tissues and organs. Among other goals, WFIRM scientists are looking for ways to create insulin-producing cells in the laboratory, engineered blood vessels for

heart bypass surgery Coronary artery bypass surgery, also known as coronary artery bypass graft (CABG, pronounced "cabbage") is a surgical procedure to treat coronary artery disease (CAD), the buildup of plaques in the arteries of the heart. It can relieve chest pai ...

and treat knee injuries through regenerated meniscus tissues. WFIRM has also led two federal initiatives to regenerate tissues from battlefield injuries (AFIRM I and AFIRM II), with a combined funding of $160 million from the

U.S. Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secur ...

. WFIRM is working to develop more than 40 different organs and tissues in the laboratory.

Anthony Atala Anthony Atala, M.D., (born July 14, 1958) is an American bioengineer, urologist, and pediatric surgeon. He is the W.H. Boyce professor of urology, the founding director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and the chair of th ...

, M.D., is the director of the institute, which is located in

Wake Forest Innovation Quarter Innovation Quarter in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, formerly Wake Forest Innovation Quarter, is an innovation district focused on research, business and education in biomedical science, information technology, digital media, clinical services and a ...

in downtown

. Atala was recruited by

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist is an academic medical center and health system located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and part of Charlotte-based Atrium Health. It is the largest employer in Forsyth County, with more than 19,220 emplo ...

in 2004, and brought many of his team members from the Laboratory for

Tissue Engineering Tissue engineering is a biomedical engineering discipline that uses a combination of cells, engineering, materials methods, and suitable biochemical and physicochemical factors to restore, maintain, improve, or replace different types of biolog ...

and Cellular Therapeutics at the

Children's Hospital Boston Boston Children's Hospital formerly known as Children's Hospital Boston until 2012 is a nationally ranked, freestanding acute care children's hospital located in Boston, Massachusetts, adjacent both to its teaching affiliate, Harvard Medical Sch ...

and

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

. Notable achievements announced at WFIRM have been the first lab-grown organ, a

urinary bladder The urinary bladder, or simply bladder, is a hollow organ in humans and other vertebrates that stores urine from the kidneys before disposal by urination. In humans the bladder is a distensible organ that sits on the pelvic floor. Urine ente ...

. The artificial urinary bladder was the first to be implanted into a human. WFIRM research also discovered

stem cells In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can differentiate into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type of ...

harvested from the amniotic fluid of pregnant women. These stems cells are

pluripotent Pluripotency: These are the cells that can generate into any of the three Germ layers which imply Endodermal, Mesodermal, and Ectodermal cells except tissues like the placenta. According to Latin terms, Pluripotentia means the ability for many thin ...

, meaning that they can be manipulated to differentiate into various types of mature cells that make up nerve, muscle, bone, and other tissues while avoiding the problems of tumor formation and ethical concerns that are associated with embryonic

. Research at WFIRM was also essential towards developing the field of

bioprinting Three dimensional (3D) bioprinting is the utilization of 3D printing–like techniques to combine cells, growth factors, and/or biomaterials to fabricate biomedical parts, often with the aim of imitating natural tissue characteristics. Generally, 3 ...

. This was first accomplished by converting a Hewlett Packard paper and ink printer to deposit cells, which is now on display at the

National Museum of Health and Medicine The National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM) is a museum in Silver Spring, Maryland, near Washington, DC. The museum was founded by U.S. Army Surgeon General William A. Hammond as the Army Medical Museum (AMM) in 1862; it became the NMHM in ...

. Later, the more advanced Integrated Tissue-Organ Printer (ITOP) was developed at the institute. In 2019, the U.S. federal

Department of Health and Human Services The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is ...

(HHS) provided a 5-year grant through BARDA to support further development of WFIRM technology to better understand damage to the body caused by inhaling

chlorine gas Chlorine is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate betwee ...

. The technology is called "lung-on-a-chip" and is a part of a "miniaturized system of human organs" developed by WFIRM that can allow researchers to create models of the body's response to harmful agents. The Institute also is involved in research on energy fields and the human biofield. This led to a retracted article on Energy Medicine. “I absolutely stand by the validity of the science” says author of energy field paper now flagged by journal – Retraction Watch
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References

External links

Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine
Wake Forest University Economy of Winston-Salem, North Carolina Buildings and structures in Winston-Salem, North Carolina 2006 establishments in North Carolina Life sciences industry {{NorthCarolina-stub