Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem has been selected to lead a regenerative medicine project designed to help wounded veterans. The research and medical care received a $75 million grant from the Department of Defense. The institute of regenerative medicine can transplant tissue, oversee the growth of skin and has devices that decrease scar formation.
“The treatments really vary. They vary from treatments that you can do in an outpatient basis, where patients can just come in and get their treatment at a clinic, to treatments that require open surgery and implantation,” said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Institute.
The center also works to restore functions to limbs that have been injured, as well as reconstruct lower abdomen areas that have been wounded in explosions. Wake Forest, along with 30 other institutions will work with Walter Reed Medical Center to coordinate therapies, clinical trials and treatments.
Some of the treatments are outpatient procedures while other regenerative medicine measures require open surgery. About 60 Wake Forest physicians and scientists will be involved in this project. The grant lasts through 2018.