Michigan-Pittsburgh-Wyss Regenerative Medicine (MPWRM) Resource Center leadership
Michigan-Pittsburgh-Wyss Regenerative Medicine (MPWRM) Resource Center leadership
“The Resource Center reflects a key part of the McGowan Institute’s mission to develop technologies that address tissue and organ failure. We are very focused on not just the invention of solutions, but on moving these concepts forward to the patients in need. The Resource Center allows us to focus on the non-technical barriers to translation, such as regulatory guidance, appropriate pre-clinical testing or transition to regulated manufacturing. Our success in this partnership provides a model for translational approaches in other tissue areas as well.”
William R. Wagner, PhD, Director of McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Distinguished Professor of Surgery, Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering.
“The strength of the CCR lies in the synergistic approach to translational research by clinicians, engineers and basic scientists. The environment at CCR fosters multidisciplinary approaches to regenerate mineralized and soft tissues of craniofacial structures and employ tissue engineered strategies such as cellular therapies, biomaterials and mechanobiology. Our innovation has resulted in new and unique technologies developed by the CCR members.”
Charles Sfeir, DDS, PhD, the Associate Dean for Research at the School of Dental Medicine, Associate Professor of Periodontics and Preventive Dentistry, Oral Biology and Bioengineering.
“The MPWRM Resource Center has been instrumental in bridging the translation gap by providing resources to guide us through our communications with the FDA to obtain clarity on collection of animal data prior to the first in-human study. Furthermore, the MPWRM Resource Center is providing the funds to perform our last pre-clinical trial of the ECM device following the good manufacturing practices (GMPs) in an animal good laboratory practice (GLP) study. Traditional NIH funding mechanisms do not fund those types of studies as they are very expensive. Lastly, The MPWRM Resource Center has also been providing support to hone-in on market assessments for the technology, along with identifying commercial partners.”
Alejandro Almarza, PhD, Associate Professor of Oral Biology and Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Charles Sfeir talking about his project during the MPWRM Resource Center Retreat
“sciVelo’s purpose in this stage 3 is to provide expert commercial translation guidance to each funded team in order to help them realize their goal of commercial implementation. We’ve been working to help build the project portfolio, making funding decisions, and aligning experimental design to market-oriented endpoints. We perform these functions here at Pitt and across the partner institutions which catalyzes a much larger community of business and science directed to dental, oral, and craniofacial innovation.”
Donald P. Taylor, PhD, MBA, CLP, the Executive Director of sciVelo, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Commercial Translation in the Health Sciences, and Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh.