A Record of “Firsts”

Physicians and scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine are developing organs and tissues for virtually every part of the human body. The institute’s track record includes many “firsts”:

• Developed biological strategies to enable certain human cell types that were previously thought not to be expandable outside the body to be grown in large quantities.
• First demonstration that complex tissue structures could be engineered using cells.
• Developed the first tissue-engineered product to go to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval for clinical applications, consisting of cells and biomaterials for injectable therapy.
• First in the world to use native acellular biomaterials in patients for the regeneration of tissues.
• Created the first full tissue-engineered organ. The institute is the only research facility in the world to have created a wholly laboratory-grown organ, engineered bladder tissue that has been successfully implanted in patients.
• Identified and characterized a new class of non-controversial stem cells derived from amniotic fluid and placenta, which show promise for the treatment of many diseases. These stem cells have been proven to differentiate into many tissue types, including blood vessel, bone, liver and muscle. A bank of 100,000 specimens could potentially provide 99 percent of the U.S. population with a genetic match for transplantation.