Uppsala researchers lead EU initiative in regenerative medicine

Treatment of conditions caused by damaged or lost tissue is a major challenge. There are few donors. Starting this year, researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden will be leading an international project where leading research groups, together with companies, are to develop methods for using stem cells, growth factors, and functional materials, which would stimulate the body to heal itself.

The demand for organ transplants is great, but there are few donors. This has led to the development of an interdisciplinary research field called “regenerative medicine”. For example, these methods should be able to help patients with severe burn injuries or patients with broken bones that are not healing. These researchers will also be working with methods to regenerate muscles and the heart.

However, the development of regenerative methods is very slow, owing to lack of infrastructure and communication between research teams and industry. It takes many years for an ultramodern technology to go through all the testing, with numerous animal experiments. Very few technologies result in finished medical products that reach the market.

A new European initiative is seeking solutions to rationalize the entire process from idea to market. The international project BIODESIGN started on January 1, 2012, under the leadership of researchers from the Department of Chemistry – Ångström laboratory, Uppsala University. The project has a total budget of EUR 15 million, and its mission is to create close collaboration between large and small companies and leading research teams in regenerative medicine. Thereby the combination of valuable knowledge and many years of practical experience can facilitate a more rapid development and optimization of functional materials and also reduce the number of animal experiments required.

“Incredibly exciting. With our experience of bringing new molecules and materials to clinic, together with leading European researchers we can get greater leverage and tackle challenges in a way that wasn’t possible in the past. Moreover, it fits in well in Uppsala with the SciLife commitment, which provides us with access to competence and effective tools of analysis in life sciences,” says Jöns Hilborn, professor at the Department of Chemistry - Ångström, Uppsala University.

For more information, please contact Sonya Piskounova, PhD, tel: +46 (0)18-471 37 16; mobile: +46 (0)702-07 04 48, e-mail: sonya.piskounova@mkem.uu.se