The World Stem Cell Summit will bring together
like-minded people who are interested in stem
cell technologies and bringing these technologies to patients.
With specific reference to orthopedics,
what we do in this department, we've
gone through several different eras
in caring for patients with joint disorders and bone
disorders.
We used to have the era of resection.
If you had a bad joint, we took it out.
Your function wasn't very good, but your pain went away.
Then we went into the era of fusion.
If a joint was bad, we'd fuse it.
Again, your pain would go away, it would be very durable
and allow you to do many activities,
but your function went down because that fused joint
would be a stiff joint.
Then we went into the era of replacement,
which is the area we're in now.
We do joint arthroplasty.
We replace worn our joints with plastic, ceramic,
and metal pieces.
Rendering the era of regeneration
in which stem cells will play an important part,
we need people from many different disciplines
to contribute to the care of these patients
and to get these technologies of stem cells to patients.
Hence, the World Stem Cell Congress
will take a large step toward bringing
these varied disciplines together.
AFIRM is the Armed Forces Institute
of Regenerative Medicine.
It started five years ago, and we're
entering the end of the first five-year phase.
The applications for years 6 through 10
are under consideration by our government now.
I'm involved with the Rutgers Cleveland
Clinic, a consortium of AFIRM.
The Mayo Clinic is part of that consortium,
and we are responsible for bone regeneration
and for nerve regeneration.
We use stem cells in this regenerative research program,
both for the bone and for the nerve.
The nerve program is led by Dr. Tony Windebank and myself,
and we intend to proceed with the first in-human use
of the peripheral nerve graft very shortly.
The bone program likewise is very nearing human use.
We anticipate the first in-human use
to occur here at the Mayo Clinic in late 2013 or early 2014.
For both programs, patients who suffer segmental defects
will be most helped.
For example, either a civilian or a military injury
can result in a piece of a nerve being missing.
It's very hard to replace a piece
of a nerve missing when the missing part is
larger than about an inch.
Hopefully, these technologies that
are being developed under AFIRM at Mayo Clinic
will allow the regeneration of nerve gaps larger than that,
2 centimeters, a little bit less than an inch, with return
of function to neither the upper or lower extremity as a result.
With the bone program, again, segmental defects happen.
That is, missing pieces of bone caused
by either a motor vehicle accident, a fall from a height,
or likewise caused by our removing a piece of bone when
it's diseased by either infection or by tumor.
It's very hard to heal gaps in bones.
This bone regeneration program will do so.
And once again, we'll use both stem cells and polymer
technologies to bring those stem cells to the place
that they need to do their work.
This is my 34th year in the military.
I was on active duty for 13 years.
I've been a reservist the rest of the time.
I'm now a Brigadier General in the Air Force Reserve.
I work as the military advisor to the president of Uniformed
Services University.
That is the military medical school.
I've also been deployed and have served as the deputy commander
of the Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad, Iraq,
and got an opportunity to see both our wounded
and the wounded civilians who came in for our care.
These technologies will help people in similar situations,
whether they're injured in the military
as either combatants or people who happen to be nearby
or whether they're civilians, because the wounds can
be the same in both civilian trauma and military trauma.