Rutgers Consortium Offers New Hope for War Wounded
Institute to develop new products and therapies for the repair of battlefield injuries through regenerative medicine
The use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan has caused a marked increase in severe blast trauma, now responsible for approximately 75 percent of all injuries. The injured service men and women are experiencing severe limb, head, face and burn injuries that can take years to treat and usually result in significant lifelong impairment.
AFIRM will develop new products and therapies for the repair of battlefield injuries through the use of regenerative medicine. This innovative approach employs biological therapy, including stem cells and growth factors; tissue and biomaterials engineering; and transplants to enable the body to repair, replace, restore and regenerate damaged tissues and organs. 
The institute also will dramatically accelerate the rate at which promising biomaterials as well as cell-based and combined regenerative medicine technologies can be converted into new therapies to restore lost tissue and lost function. These products and therapies also will serve civilian trauma and burn patients.
Within AFIRM, the Rutgers-Cleveland Clinic Consortium (RCCC) is headed by Joachim Kohn, Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in Rutgers’ School of Arts and Sciences, and George Muschler, an orthopedic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic.
The RCCC is an integrated network of 14 dedicated partners based in premier academic institutions and medical centers. This network extends to industrial collaborators and health care companies that have expressed an interest in the commercialization of new products and therapies emerging from the RCCC's research and development activities.
The RCCC team is built around an outstanding group of experts, working at advanced performance sites with approximately 160 personnel including about 40 faculty members and more than 40 post-doctoral associates.
This consortium has been funded with $42.5 million over five years through the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (MRMC); with additional funding from the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, Office of the Surgeon General; the National Institutes of Health; the Veterans Administration; and local public and private matching funding.
Biomaterials will play a crucial role in developing new therapies for regenerating tissue and healing large wounds. The Rutgers team, with its strength in biomaterials science, has embarked on creating new methods to identify unique biomaterials compositions tailored to support the growth of new nerves, blood vessels, skin, bone or muscle.