By Mike Fitts
mfitts@scbiznews.com
Published July 23, 2009

A $20 million federal grant will launch a collaborative program across South Carolina to fabricate working human tissue for transplants.

The five-year project is the largest competitive National Science Foundation grant ever received in the state, according to today’s announcement.

“This holds the promise of raising South Carolina to national prominence in the field of human tissue biofabrication.” said Jerry Odom, principal investigator for the award and executive director of USC Foundations.

“Today is a great day for the research and education in science and engineering here in the state of South Carolina,” W. Lance Haworth, director of the office of integrative activities at the National Science Foundation, said at a news conference today at the Statehouse.

The lead scientist for the project is Roger Markwald of the Medical University of South Carolina. Markwald said construction of tissue or organs that can be transplanted is limited now because of an inability to create blood flow. The goal of the team is to build large organs, such as kidneys, livers or hearts, with the genetic material of the patient included. That won’t happen until a working network of veins can be constructed in that tissue.

“We are trying to build tissue and organs from the inside out, which is a different approach than anyone has taken,” Markwald said. “First, we want to create a three-dimensional vascular tree, and then the organ. This will allow us to develop the applications to build many different types of organs.”

Unlike a donated organ, such a created piece of tissue would be a perfect genetic match with the recipient and would not carry the possibility of transmission of a disease from the donor.

Haworth highlighted the economic potential of the field if a breakthrough can be made. “This research program has the potential to create a new industry, creating jobs and businesses based on computer-aided, layer-by-layer tissue and biomaterials, with the intention of making functional tissues and organs for transplants that help cure the sick and to help heal the injured,” he said.

The grant will establish an alliance among the state’s three research universities, three historically black colleges and four other educational institutions. The award should facilitate the hiring of 22 new faculty members statewide with needed expertise, the construction of a state tissue biofabrication center and community outreach to share the skills being perfected.

The universities involved are:

• Clemson University.
• Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
• University of South Carolina in Columbia.
• University of South Carolina-Beaufort.
• Claflin University in Orangeburg.
• S.C. State University in Orangeburg.
• Voorhees College in Denmark.
• Furman University in Greenville.
• Denmark Technical College.
• Greenville Technical College.

Haworth noted the broad collaboration inherent in the proposal. Students from many levels and backgrounds will benefit from the project, he said.

MUSC President Ray Greenberg said some key infrastructure and cooperation helped bring the project to South Carolina. The level of cooperation among the state’s three research universities helped allow this grant to go forward, because it brings engineering and computing expertise from Clemson and USC to MUSC’s work on creating new tissues.

The state’s endowed chairs program, funded with lottery proceeds, also has been vital, Greenberg said. One of the first endowed chairs works in this field, which he said showed the science foundation that the level of talent necessary to do such work was ready in South Carolina.

Some of the researchers working on the grant projects, including Markwald, will work in a new bioengineering facility already slated for the MUSC campus, Greenberg said.

Christian Przirembel, Clemson vice president for research and economic development, said this project fits its biomaterials program perfectly. Clemson has been working on a biodegradable “scaffolding” around which new tissues and organs can be created, Przirembel said.

The computer network that connects the three research universities will be expanded to connect with the other colleges in the program, allowing collaboration across institutions and the sharing of the knowledge being developed with their students, Przirembel said. If this grant sparks a biomedical industry, it will require that S.C. workers receive the educational background to perform the work involved, he said.

Claflin President Henry Tisdale said the grant program will work well with his university’s current collaborative efforts. For example, Claflin students already can take part in a medical program at MUSC, taking three years of classes in Orangeburg and two at MUSC to obtain a master’s in public health degree, Tisdale said. For the grant program, Claflin will recruit three new faculty members to take part in the research program and will partner with Greenville Technical College to develop degree and training programs.

The grant was announced by the S.C. Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research and Institutional Development Awards, a panel with the goal of increasing research awards in the state.