RWMC gets $11.8M to advance stem cell research

For the last five years, researchers at Roger Williams Medical Center have been studying bone marrow stem cells and how they might be used in tissue repair and regeneration, supported by a $13.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
The payoff has been substantial, including a stem cell spray that dramatically accelerates wound healing and genetically engineered antibodies that can target therapeutic stem cells and deliver them to the exact places where they’re needed.
Now, with another $11.8 million from the NIH, those scientists are going to work to take those and other promising advances to the next level, aiming to develop medications and treatment protocols that can be used to heal and save lives around the world.
The grant, announced last week, extends the operation of Roger Williams’ Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) by another five years. The stem cell center, established in September 2003, is one of four COBRE facilities in Rhode Island; the others are at Rhode Island Hospital – focused on cancer; Women & Infants Hospital – focused on perinatal biology; and Brown University – focused on genomics and proteomics.
For Roger Williams, which is affiliated with Boston University’s medical school but is also an independent community hospital, the COBRE center is a particular point of pride and a major research hub. It is run by Dr. Vincent Falanga, chairman of dermatology and skin surgery at the hospital and an expert in tissue repair and difficult-to-heal wounds.
In an interview, Falanga said the COBRE researchers initially focused on the biology of stem cells derived from adults’ bone marrow, on a basic-science level, and as they learned more, they began working on potential clinical applications.
“It became clear that many of the things we were finding out were really related to tissue repair, wound healing, things that have to do with patients who have nonhealing ulcers on their legs, or pressure ulcers, or battlefield injuries,” Falanga said.
The researchers began testing their new concepts, and last year they published a paper in the journal Tissue Engineering describing how they had used bone marrow stem cells to treat previously non-healing wounds.
The tangible results put the team in a good position when the COBRE grant came up for renewal, Falanga said, because the NIH wants to see results, a strong publication record and a road map for where scientists plan to go next. NIH money is increasingly hard to get and this application process was highly competitive, he said, so getting a new grant was a coup.
In the next five years, Falanga said, the researchers will continue their basic-science work, but also pursue five specific translational-research projects:
• The stem-cell spray, which involves spraying a mix of cells and a fiber to hold them directly onto wounds, is the farthest along in development; the center is seeking approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin manufacturing the spray in a Roger Williams facility and testing it on more patients as an “investigational” therapy.
• Another cell-delivery system using “bi-specific” or two-armed antibodies will be further tested; the antibodies essentially grab the therapeutic cells with one arm and target structures within the wound with the other arm, delivering the cells right where they’re needed. Two separate researchers are working in this field: one looking at the antibodies, the other looking at a factor that can be used to “mobilize” stem cells within the body, using a system similar to one already used in chemotherapy.
• A third project involves ways to prime skin before surgery, using gene therapies and specific surgical techniques, to attract stem cells to the area and speed healing.
• Following up on an “unexpected” finding involving stem cells found in skin and muscle that is healing, a researcher is looking at those cells’ role in scarring.
• A fifth team is looking at how “incubating” stem cells on islet cells within the pancreas could help grow and maintain insulin-producing cells; this could be a real breakthrough in the treatment of Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes, Falanga said, in which the biggest problem is that insulin-producing cells in the pancreas die off.
The applications of all this research are broad and could help millions of people, Falanga said.
“We have an epidemic of wounds,” Falanga said. “People don’t realize that. We tend to focus on cancer and cardiovascular disease, but there is this epidemic of people suffering from wounds – whether they’re in a nursing home, our grandparents getting pressure ulcers, two million of them, or 500,000 with diabetic ulcers and many who lose their legs from amputation. Plus [there are] military personnel coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq.” •