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CENTER FOR EXCELLENCE IN REGENERATIVE BIOLOGY TO BE FOUNDED AT IUPUI

INDIANAPOLIS - A team of seven biologists, including four IUPUI faculty members, has been awarded an $879,338 grant to establish a research center for the study of ways to regenerate human tissues and organs.

The two-year grant from the 21st Century Research and Technology Fund of Indiana will found the Indiana University Center for Excellence in Regenerative Biology and Medicine at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Funding will begin in January 2001.

The ultimate goal of the Center for Excellence's research is to provide a foundation for the development of therapies that will restore quality of life and economic productivity to persons disabled by injury or degenerative disease.

Research team members are Ellen Chernoff, IUPUI biology professor and director of the Center; Michael King of the Terre Haute Center for Medical Education of the Indiana University School of Medicine; Anthony Mescher and Anton Neff of the Medical Sciences Program, IU Bloomington; Simon Rhodes, biology professor at IUPUI; Rosamund Smith, Eli Lilly research scientist and adjunct biology professor at IUPUI; and principal investigator David L. Stocum, biology professor and Dean of the Purdue School of Science at IUPUI.

All seven biologists will serve as founding faculty members for the research center. They are currently working together on a novel approach to understanding the differences in gene activity and regulation that distinguish tissue regeneration from scar tissue formation.

"We are focusing on spinal cord regeneration, and the regeneration of limb tissues such as skin, nerves, bones and muscles," Dean David L. Stocum said.

"Let us say that someone has received a paralyzing injury to the spinal cord. What we hope our research will do is identify the molecular factors necessary to regrow nerves in the spinal cord and thus cure the paralysis".

Although it is not possible to predict when such a therapy will be available, initial research findings suggest that identifying the genes involved in stimulating and inhibiting regeneration is feasible and "look promising," Stocum said.

Team members began their research in 1999 with a two-year grant from Eli Lilly, and have focused on the comparison of injured spinal cord and amputated limbs in the frog, Xenopus laevis. Frogs can regenerate body tissue during tadpole stages, but lose the ability to regenerate after metamorphosing into a juvenile frog.

"We have used molecular screening techniques to identify several genes that appear to be important for regeneration," Stocum said.

Once the genes responsible for regeneration in the frog are discovered, information from the human genome project can be used to identify corresponding genes in humans, Stocum said. Cloning of those genes will facilitate the synthesis of the proteins responsible for tissue regeneration, as opposed to the formation of scar tissue when wounds heal.

The Center for Excellence in Regenerative Biology and Medicine is unique in its focus on exploiting an animal model that is a strong regenerator at one stage of its life cycle, and a weak regenerator at a later stage, Stocum said. Other efforts in the emerging field of regenerative biology and medicine focus on cell transplants and bioartificial tissues, which the Center will also incorporate as it develops, he explained.

The new grant, awarded from a $50 million fund the state of Indiana established in 1999 to finance research and technology that will stimulate state economic growth, will allow the researchers to continue identifying genes and to expand their research to look into the mechanisms that cause genes involved in regeneration or scar formation to turn on or off, Stocum said.

Each researcher will conduct his or her part of the work at their respective laboratories, with the Center being administered from the Department of Biology at IUPUI.

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