Today's discoveries, tomorrow's cure

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Today's discoveries, tomorrow's cure

Regenerative medicine takes the spotlight at IBBME's 50 ^thAnniversary events

17 October, 2012

The unassuming box sits on the table. One part is clear plastic, allowing you to see the empty chamber inside. You don't know to look at it, but this is a device that grows controlled colonies of cells. One day soon, the empty chamber may hold a cell colony, or even tissue generated from a patient's own body, to help diagnose or treat diseases such as cancer.

Just one of many cutting-edge devices on display at the IBBME Tomorrow's Technology Showcase on October 10 ^th, part of its 50 ^thAnniversary celebrations, Octane Biotech's "automated bioreactor" highlights an area of major growth for the health care industry in years to come: regenerative medicine.

Regenerative medicine is a field of research to restore function in the body through the regeneration of cells, tissues and organs.

It's also one of the hottest markets around.

Octane Biotech's automated bioreactor is one such "hot market" device. The "one patient" disposable device is designed to help diagnose biopsies and potentially even customized therapies by bringing the cell cultures grown directly from patients' samples into the hospital environment. Rather than needing to farm out samples to companies that grow cell cultures - resulting in long wait times and greater expense - the automated bioreactor would allow lab technicians to examine cells grown on-site.

It's future-thinking devices like these that could translate to huge future savings for the medical industry.

According to CCRM, one of IBBME's Showcase presenters and a Canadian not-for-profit organization hosted by the University of Toronto that supports regenerative medicine commercialization ventures, regenerative medicine is an emerging industry with a projected annual growth of 30%.

And it's not just a field for doctors.

"Regenerative medicine is a great example of the integration of engineering and medicine and IBBME’s technology showcase was a wonderful way to feature an industry that will continue to grow in importance as today’s discoveries become tomorrow’s cures,” says Stacey Johnson, Communications Manager with the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine.

Regenerative medicine is also rapidly becoming known for tackling diseases relating to aging— a central concerns for the health industry as the population ages.

At IBBME's 50 ^thAnniversary Symposium, "Defining Tomorrow: Advancing the Integration of Engineering and Medicine," keynote and plenary speakers outlined the many regenerative medicine strategies currently being researched by doctors, scientists and engineers as cures for neurological diseases and disorders from spinal cord injuries and Alzheimers to stroke patients.

Professor Milos Popovic , core faculty at IBBME and the Toronto Rehab Chair in Spinal Cord Injury Research at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, described the success of his Functional Electronic Stimulation, or FES, in the treatment of C5 spinal cord injuries that severely limit a person's ability to grasp, move, and hold objects.

"Patients must imagine movement," stated Popovic during his presentation on the rehabilitation process involving FES. "They must struggle a bit. And then we turn on FES. "

FES floods the nervous system with small, controlled bursts of electrical stimulation which has been shown to help regenerate key tissues in the nervous system through the "retraining" process. The FES treatments also shows evidence that it delays the progression of injuries to the "white matter," or outer layer of the spinal cord - trauma that further complicates rehabilitation.

To date, the treatment has been used as an additional aid to traditional physiotherapy—with exciting results. During clinical trials, when patients were administered 40 hours of FES treatment alongside a 40 hour schedule of physiotherapy, FES was seen to greatly improve or maintain function in patient groups across the board, even after six months.

On top of maximizing a patient's ability to move, however, is the enormous potential for savings of both time and money. FES therapy could cut costs from $360,000 – the cost of yearly physiotherapy over the average life span of a spinal cord injury patient – to a mere $60, 000.

Popovic is currently extending his FES research to the recovery of stroke patients.

University of Toronto Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering

Today's discoveries, tomorrow's cure

Regenerative medicine takes the spotlight at IBBME's 50 th Anniversary events

Regenerative medicine takes the spotlight at IBBME's 50 ^thAnniversary events