As part of the effort to address the challenges of caring for the nation’s wounded warriors, the Department of Defense has announced the creation of a new $250 million institution focused on research in regenerative medicine. The Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM) will be a virtual organization to include over 20 academic and commercial entities committed to developing clinical therapies and advanced treatment options, over the next five years.
 
Advances in regenerative medicine could dramatically decrease the amount of time needed to recover from severe injuries that currently require years of treatment, and sometimes result in significant lifetime impairment.   
 
“Therapies developed by the AFIRM project will greatly benefit wounded warriors as well as the civilian population with burns or severe trauma due to illness or injury,” said Dr. S. Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.  
 
AFIRM will focus on five key areas within regenerative medicine: burn repair; wound healing without scarring; craniofacial reconstruction; limb reconstruction, regeneration or transplantation;  and compartment syndrome, a condition related to inflammation after surgery or injury that can lead to increased pressure, impaired blood flow, nerve damage and muscle death.
 
AFIRM has a five-year initial cooperative agreement with funding of $85 million provided by the federal government, along with $80 million in matching funds from universities and local and state governments. In addition, $100 million in existing grants from other agencies such as the National Institutes of Health brings the total funding to more than $250 million. “As far as we know, this is the largest U.S. government-funded research consortium in the field of regenerative medicine,” said Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the U.S. Army Surgeon General. “Not only that, we are bringing together a dream team of some of the greatest minds in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. This is frankly a very exciting venture for us,” Schoomaker added.
 
AFIRM will be made up of at least two multi-institutional consortia – one led by Wake Forest University, and the other led by Rutgers University. Each will work closely with the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research in San Antonio, Texas, to satisfy the military’s needs in this advanced field of medical research.
 
“We’re embarking on the next generation of research that is going to redefine the face of Army medicine,” said Schoomaker. “We’re doing it with enthusiastic and skilled partners, and we’re doing it for our wounded warriors.”

View a video broadcast of the announcement (in two parts).