Much in the way a service or police dog may be the advance guard for its human partner in situations where there are unknown safety factors, stem cell therapies performed on companion animals may pave the way for human treatments. To accomplish that translational goal, North Carolina State University has entered into a collaborative research and clinical endeavor with Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center to accelerate the development of new therapies with promising benefits for people as well as the animals on which they are initially used.
The Center for Comparative Medicine and Translational Research (CCMTR) at NCSU's College of Veterinary Medicine is pooling its resources with those of the Institute of Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist to advance regenerative medicine treatments. According to Dr. Jorge Piedrahita, director of CCMTR and a genomics professor in the Dept. of Molecular Biomedical Sciences at NCSU:
“A major part of our work will be to translate laboratory research results into medical therapies for companion animals,” Piedrahita says. “The ability to study diseases that affect organ health in animals is critically useful for advances in human medicine as these animals share our environment and the vast majority of our genes.”
(Dr. Piedrahita's photo, right, courtesy of NCSU)
The CCMTR team includes more than 100 scientists who study treatments for animals and humans in what is known as the "One Medicine" approach, which takes the view that advances in human and veterinary medicine are dependent on an overlapping collection of technologies and research discoveries. The philosophy has been sustained most recently by the striking commonalities found to underlie the genomes of humans, chimpanzees, dogs, cattle, chickens, and rodents.
The Center for Comparative Medicine and Translational Research includes these research cores:
- Biostatistics
- Clinical Genomics
- Comparative Neurobiology
- Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases
- Mucosal Pathophysiology
- Oncology
- Stem Cells & Regenerative Medicine
North Carolina State and Wake Forest Baptist will exchange students and faculty, as well as collaborate on research projects and publications in this joint translational research effort. In addition, NCSU will bring bioengineering and textiles research into the partnership, such as manufacturing that includes building bioreactors and fabrics that speed up the healing of tissue.
-->To read more about "healing fabrics," see our blog $1.3M DOD Research Grant For CSU Chemist to Develop Biotech Bandage
-->For more on bioreactors, read our blog Bioscience Medical Success Story using Harvard Bioscience's Stem Cell Technology System
-->For our recent animal science/vet blog on police dog Lakota, see Veterinary Medical Science Hospital at UGA in Spotlight with K9 Success Story
Biotechnology Calendar Inc. will be on the North Carolina State University, Raleigh campus on April 18, 2012 for its 3rd Annual NCSU BioResearch Product Faire event, where life science researchers and equipment vendors meet and discuss the latest laboratory technologies. For more information on exhibiting, click the button below:
