Project BriefOpen Competition 1 - BiotechnologyDry Storage of Living Cell and Tissue-Engineered ProductsDevelop the technology to dehydrate and store living cells, tissues, and organs (such as blood vessel or skin), so that the tissue may be stored and transported at room temperature and rehydrated without damage or loss of function, enabling broader, more economical use of tissues and tissue-engineered products around the world. Sponsor: Organ Recovery Systems, Inc.701 East Bay Street, Suite 433MSC 1119, Port City Center Charleston, SC 29403
Organ Recovery Systems (ORS) hopes to provide a missing piece for one of the most promising new fields in medicine. The tissue-engineering industry is poised to bring dramatic changes to the treatment of disease and injury. From cultured skin tissue, cardiovascular grafts, and blood vessels to more complex organs like kidneys, companies around the world are vying to develop methods to make replacement tissues and organs to supplant damaged or dysfunctional body parts. By some projections, tissue engineering may develop treatments and cures for diseases and disorders that account for half the nation's total health-care costs. A major obstacle is the long-term storage of the products, without which the transplantation clinics and surgical suites will have to be located close to the production centers. Simple cell suspensions and tissues such as blood vessels have been successfully frozen and thawed without damage, but this requires special transportation and storage conditions beyond those of a small hospital or clinic. To date, cells and tissues have not been successfully preserved for convenient storage at room temperature. ORS proposes to develop a technique for preserving living cells and tissues by drying them for room-temperature storage. Some simple organisms in nature are known to survive dehydration, and a key mechanism is the loading of cells with certain sugars that stabilize and preserve the cell structure and proteins during the dry state. This process is not effective for higher animals because mammalian cells are impermeable to the large sugar molecules. ORS plans to use an engineered molecule to form pores in the cell walls that can be open and shut in a controlled fashion, allowing the preserving sugars to be introduced into the cell without permanently altering its porosity. The company will explore controlling the sugaring process, alternate methods of drying and rehydrating the tissue, and any residual effects of the process. The target tissues will be storing normal and tissue-engineered blood vessels. Duke University Medical Center (Durham, N.C.) and the Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston, S.C.) will participate in the project, along with consultants from the University of Colorado and Massachusetts General Hospital. The project is extremely challenging, and well beyond the resources of ORS, a small company, to accomplish alone. If successful, the technology ultimately would enable the delivery and widespread use of living tissue-engineered products and permit their use for patients in lower-technology areas.
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