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Intercytex part of consortia awarded substantial funding to establish US Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM)
AFIRM will use regenerative medicine to develop new treatments for battlefield injuries
25 Apr 2008 -
Intercytex Group plc announced that it is part of consortia that have been selected to establish the United States' Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM), supported by a foundation grant from the US Government totalling $85 million. The purpose of AFIRM is to use the science of regenerative medicine to develop new treatments for battlefield injuries. Therapies developed by AFIRM will also be used in trauma and burns patients in the general public.
AFIRM is a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary network developing advanced treatment options for severely wounded soldiers. It is managed and funded through the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (MRMC), with additional funding from the Office of Naval Research, the US Air Force Office of the Surgeon General, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as local public and private matching funding.
AFIRM is made up of two civilian research consortia working with the US Army Institute for Surgical Research in Fort Sam Houston, Texas. One consortium is led by the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the other is led by Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and the Cleveland Clinic. Intercytex is part of the McGowan-Wake Forest consortium and is the only non-US participant in AFIRM, emphasising its position in the rapidly emerging and important field of regenerative medicine.
AFIRM has been designed to speed the delivery of regenerative medicine therapies to treat critically injured soldiers from around the world, but in particular those injuries coming from theatres of operation in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are five major programmes: burn repair; wound healing without scarring; craniofacial reconstruction; limb reconstruction, regeneration or transplantation; and compartment syndrome, a condition related to inflammation after injury that can lead to increased pressure, impaired blood flow, nerve damage and muscle death.
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