The Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM), a non-profit organization that promotes legislative, regulatory, reimbursement, and financing initiatives necessary to facilitate access to life-giving advances in regenerative medicine, has formed a Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials Committee (TEBC).

The TEBC has been established to assemble the companies, academic institutions, and organizations within the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine that develop and commercialize tissue engineered and biomaterial based technologies. The primary purpose of the TEBC is to develop a better understanding of the key barriers to translation and scale up of regenerative medicine technologies including challenges in efficient product design, pilot and scale up manufacturing, regulation, and reimbursement. In addition the TEBC will focus on building public awareness of this new field of medicine and an appreciation for its potential to transform healthcare.

Members of the TEBC will include private and public sector representatives involved in the field of tissue engineering.   Tissue engineered technologies are being developed as clinical therapeutics to improve biological functions primarily through the repair, restoration, or total replacement of tissue or organ and are also being developed and commercialized as 3D tissue models and micro-organs to provide better research tools for drug discovery and clinical diagnostics. The TEBC group will include experts from interdisciplinary technologies that utilize cells, biomaterials, growth factors, small molecules, scaffolds, and other therapeutic agents to affect tissue growth or regeneration. The Committee will be led by Sarah Haecker PhD, a member of ARM's senior staff.  Sarah has more than 20 years of experience in the industry and for the last seven years has specialized in working with companies in the tissue engineering sector.

"We will work to identify and capitalize on opportunities that accelerate product development and commercialization of these innovative regenerative medicine technologies," said Sarah Haecker. "The primary purpose of the TEBC is to determine the unique requirements which will, ultimately, advance and broaden the use of clinical tissue engineered paradigms world-wide."

"To successfully design, develop, and commercialize complex tissue engineered products, it is critical to bring together the leading experts in a multitude of disciplines and technology areas," said Robert Palay, co-chair of the TEBC and chief executive officer of Cellular Dynamics International, Inc.  "I am excited to be working with this group which is strategically designed and uniquely qualified to best move the wide range of tissue engineered products forward."

"Tissue engineering has tremendous potential to treat patients suffering from the loss of tissues and organs," said Jennifer H. Elisseeff, co-chair of the TEBC and Professor, Wilmer Eye Institute and Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University. "We have the ability to establish the critical early and robust communication between the product designers and clinicians to support the successful path through commercialization of these complex products."

"Through the work of the TEBC, we hope to bring tissue engineered therapeutics to patients worldwide more quickly," said Michael Abecassis, MD, co-chair of the TEBC and Founding Director, Northwestern University Comprehensive Transplant Center.  "We intend to develop a better understanding amongst key stakeholders as to the requirements to develop a more predictable regulatory pathway and a rational reimbursement framework for tissue engineered and biomaterial based products."

Members of the Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials Committee are: Cellular Dynamics, Circle Biologics, Harvard Bioscience, Histogenics, InVivo Therapeutics, ISTO, JDRF, Johns Hopkins University, McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, MiMedx, Nanofiber Solutions, Northwestern University Comprehensive Transplant Center, Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, New York Stem Cell Institute, Organogenesis, Organovo, Pfizer, Sanofi Genzyme, Shire Regenerative Medicine, Tengion, Texas Heart Institute, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine