T
he idea of growing an organ like a bladder
or a kidney and implanting it in your
body might sound like science fiction. But
Director of the Institute for Regenerative
Medicine at Wake Forest, Dr. Anthony Atala,
is making it science fact.
Atala has received numerous awards and
honors, including the US Congress-funded
Christopher Columbus Foundation Award,
bestowed on a living American who is cur-
rently working on a discovery that will signifi-
cantly affect society. He was also named by Sci-
entific American as a 2002 Medical Treatments
Leader of the Year for his contributions to the
fields of cell, tissue and organ regeneration.
He was previously Associate Professor of
Surgery and the Director of the Laboratory
for Tissue Engineering and Cellular Thera-
peutics at Children's Hospital and Harvard
Medical School in Boston. He earned his MD
from the University of Louisville.
Atala is a surgeon, researcher and expert on
tissue engineering and stem cell biology. His
current work focuses on growing and expand-
ing new human tissues and organs (including
bladder, kidney, blood vessels, and trachea).
As we sit down to talk, Dr. Atala is re-
ceiving national coverage for remarkable re-
sults of a clinical trial started in 1999, in
which he proved the ability to grow and
successfully implant tissue engineered blad-
ders grown using an individuals own cells in
patients with a spinal defect called
Myelomeningocele. While organ transplants
typically have serious complications, all of
the trial's patients are living comfortably
with their new bladders. Dr. Atala's research
has produced five spin-off companies and
more than 170 patents.
What does regenerative medicine and organ
growth mean for the treatment of disease and
organ failure?
The concept of regenerative medicine is
based on the fact that you can harness the
body's own potential for healing. One mech-
anism to do that is to taking cells from the
same unhealthy patient. If you come in with
a deceased organ, we can take a small piece of
that organ from which we can harvest cells.
We grow those new cells outside of the body,
and 30 days later we have enough cells for
our construct. We then build a three dimen-
sional structure of the organ you are trying
to replace, and we seed the construct with cells.
In 7-8 weeks, we have the ability to implant a
healthy organ back into the patient's body.
What's the human and business impact?
People who have diseased organs can
avoid a lot of the transplantation problems
stemming from the use of other people's or-
gans. You avoid rejection. Importantly, it gets
around the organ shortage problems we have
today. The number of people on the wait list
for transplantation has increased 300% over
the last decade, in large part due to our aging
population, and the number of transplants
performed is flat. So many people need
transplants now that it has become a major
health crisis. Take kidney transplantation as
an example. When a patient gets a transplant,
he needs to be kept on immunorejection
treatments. If you are growing organs based
on someone's own cells, people wouldn't
need the immunorejection drug. That's one
example. You could also foresee a situation
where someone wouldn't need an artificial
heart valve. It costs about $50,000 per year to
keep a patient on dialysis. It can also be quite
expensive to keep a patient after transplanta-
tion. Scans need to be done, and work needs
to be done. There are about 200,000 people
on the waitlist for a transplant. If you can en-
gineer a kidney and get them off the waitlist,
it would be of enormous benefit.
Can you extend the current work to other
organs?
Yes. We are using the same strategies for
other organs. There are 80 people at Wake
Forest working on several tissues and or-
gans. Heart tissues, pancreases for diabetes,
livers and kidneys. There are different tissue
types with different complexities. There are
more simple ones like the skin, and more
difficult types like hollow organs because of
they have more functionality. Solid organs
are the most complex.
One of your spin-off companies, Tengion,
just raised a large $40 million round. What's
been your experience translating your work
to the market?
We are currently not doing research on
the bladder any more. We've done this re-
search for 16 years, and we did the first tissue
engineered bladder transplant six years ago.
The technology we developed belongs to the
institution; it was licensed to Tengion so
that the work could be expanded to more
patients. We at the university do the re-
search part; we need to partner with indus-
try so that the work can get developed
quickly and dependably. In general, I think
that in terms of translational research, we
need to make sure we aim these technolo-
gies towards practice. Everything is aimed
for the patients.
How have you found North Carolina versus say
Boston?
It's been fantastic. Boston is number
two in the country for biotech. North Car-
olina is number three. In a lot of ways it's
very similar. What's different is that there is
a brand new research park here, and it's
going to be the largest research park in the
world. Places like Boston are difficult to
grow in, the price is much higher and the
infrastructure is more crowded.
What obstacles have to be overcome to make
this mainstream treatment and how long will
it take?
That depends on many factors. We
need to expand trials for several indica-
tions. We need to go slow, but we want to
accelerate to get into to patient as quickly.
It needs to be a balance. Increasing the pa-
tient numbers and expanding the
technology slowly.
I think that you will see this field advanc-
ing steadily. We know now that in terms of
long term safety, these technologies are safe
and have the potential to be efficient.
© Copyright 2006 Forbes/Wolfe Nanotech Report
April 2006
·
5
N
Thinking Small: Dr. Anthony Atala
