November 4, 2004

National Institutes of Health grant; $7.5 M grant funds major health studies

By Megan Fellman

A group of seven Northwestern scientists, engineers and physicians who are tackling two critical health problems — the treatment of paralysis and diabetes — has received $7.5 million over five years from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The grant is part of NIBIB’s Bioengineering Research Partnership (BRP) program. A BRP is a multi-disciplinary research team applying an integrative, systems approach to develop knowledge and methods to prevent, detect, diagnose or treat disease.

The Northwestern research-ers, who ultimately would like to help paralyzed people walk again and enable diabetic individuals to lead a normal life without daily treatments or organ donations, are using regenerative medicine as their approach to achieving these goals.

“Regenerative medicine is one of the great biomedical challenges of this century as we seek to regenerate parts of the human body lost to trauma, disease and genetic factors,” said principal investigator Samuel I. Stupp, director of the Institute for BioNanotechnology in Medicine (IBNAM) at Northwestern. “New technologies from physical sciences and engineering, coupled with knowledge in advanced cell biology, are required to make this happen.”

The BRP team — representing the fields of chemistry, materials science, chemical and biomedical engineering, neurology, endocrinology and transplant surgery — is focusing on a key component of regenerative medicine: synthetic scaffolds and their interactions with cells. Without the development of effective scaffold technologies Stupp doubts significant progress can be made in regenerative medicine.

The six other investigators on the team, who are all affiliated with IBNAM, are Annelise E. Barron, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering; Dixon B. Kaufman, M.D., professor and vice chair for research in the department of surgery; John Kessler, M.D., Benjamin and Virginia T. Boshes Professor and chair of the department of neurology; William Lowe, Jr., M.D., professor and associate chair for research in the department of medicine; Phillip B. Messersmith, associate professor of biomedical engineering; and Lonnie D. Shea, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering.

A scaffold is an artificial matrix that mimics the natural environment around cells in the body. This three-dimensional scaffold must deliver important signals to cells to induce their proliferation and differentiation into specific tissues and organs.

“We want to jump start the cells into the regenerative process by giving them initial cues through the scaffold,” said Stupp, who is Board of Trustees Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry and Medicine. “Once the cells are on the right track to regenerate tissue or an organ, the artificial matrix can be programmed to disappear into nutrients as cells elaborate into a natural matrix.”

Headquartered on the Chicago campus, IBNAM is a partnership of the Feinberg School of Medicine, the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Judd A. and Marjorie Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. The University established the institute in 2000 to develop new biomedical technologies for advanced medicine.

The Institute for Bioengineering and Nanoscience in Advanced Medicine has changed its name to the Institute for BioNanotechnology in Medicine (IBNAM).