Greg Altman, a Tufts doctoral candidate, presented the findings at the 48th annual meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society in Dallas. Altman has been conducting this research under the guidance of David Kaplan, director of Tufts' Bioengineering Center (www.ase.tufts.edu/biotech) and Dr. John Richmond, professor of orthopaedic surgery at Tufts' Medical School. Altman has been pioneering the ligament engineering strategy over the past four years.
The Tufts team is developing a patented ACL product that can be custom-engineered from a patient's or donor's adult stem cells, which may be readily obtained from bone marrow. Altman also has formed a company, Tissue Regeneration Inc. (TRI), to develop and market the product. The company already has received seed capital from government grants, including the National Institutes of Health.
In the process, ligaments are grown and "banked" prior to knee trauma so they will be readily available at the time of reconstruction.
"The technology for this tissue repair and ligament growth could fundamentally change the way we treat this very common injury," said Altman. "And since the ACL has poor healing capabilities, our new ligament tissue could significantly reduce the recovery time to just weeks--rather than months--for professional athletes and sports enthusiasts compared with current surgery practices."
Approximately 200,000 ACL surgeries were done in the U.S. last year, costing an estimated $3.5 billion, plus another $200 million for subsequent therapy. Worldwide, another 400,000 people last year
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Contact: Siobhan Houton, Craig LeMoult
siobhan.houton@tufts.edu
617-627-5906
Tufts University
11-Feb-2002