Pitt gets $12 million from U.S. to treat tissue loss
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Cpl. Isaias Hernandez speaks about his wounded leg.
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A television is credited with saving Cpl. Isaias Hernandez's life in Iraq when an indirect artillery round aimed at his convoy hit in front of him and another GI. The other soldier was killed.
"I was carrying a TV for our convoy to use, and it was covering my vital organs, and the doctors said it acted like a shield," said Cpl. Hernandez, 24, a native of Bristol, Conn., now living in San Antonio. But the mortar blew the front muscle out of his right thigh.
He underwent several surgical procedures, including the transplant of part of a back muscle into his leg, but a hole remained in the tissue.
Then Cpl. Hernandez got a chance to undergo a new type of treatment developed by the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a joint effort of the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC. He received an injection of extracellular matrix, or ECM, a naturally made cell scaffold that recruits stem cells to injury sites to regrow normal tissue rather than scars.
The result was a 12 percent to 15 percent increase in muscle mass and a similar increase in strength, said Dr. Stephen F. Badylak, deputy director of McGowan and the physician who helped to pioneer the use of this matrix. He developed the material that the team used on Cpl. Hernandez at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. He also was part of that team.
Now, thanks to a $6.3 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Technology Transition, which was announced Tuesday, as many as 80 people with massive tissue loss in major muscles will also undergo the procedure over the next two years.
"The military will supply at least half of the patients," Dr. Badylak said after a news conference at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum in Oakland.
Forty of the procedures will be done by the Pitt team; then the pioneers will teach the procedure to personnel at four other institutions, who will do the rest of them.
The $6.3 million is part of a total $12 million, two-year deal the McGowan Institute struck with the Office of Technology Transition.
First Published May 26, 2010 12:00 am
