Project aims to grow muscle tissue for wounded soldiers

Led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, the team will spend the next four years working on REPAIR, an acronym made from REgenerative electronic Patch through Advanced Intelligent Regulation. The project includes researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern University, the University of Vermont, the University of Wisconsin, the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, and neuroengineers and bioengineers at Rice University in Texas.

Digital bandage treats chronic wounds

According to Rice, few treatment options exist when trauma destroys over 20 per cent of a muscle. Such large wounds, which are common in recent military conflicts, overwhelm the body’s natural capacity to regenerate muscle tissue. Instead, a stiff scar forms in place of the missing muscle, which can lead to significant disability.

“With these severe injuries it’s been drilled into us through all of our training that functional muscle replacement is not possible,” said grant principal investigator Dr Stephen Badylak, a professor of surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and deputy director of Pitt’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. “The sort of technology we’re developing offers hope where there otherwise would have been no hope.”