Wake Forest University Health Sciences (WFUHS) is one of the leading regenerative medicine centers in the world. Researchers at WFUHS were the first in the world to engineer laboratory-grown organs that were successfully implanted in humans. They are also pioneering cutting edge technologies aiming at translating the science of regenerative medicine into clinical therapies in the immediate future. One of these technologies envisions the use of discarded human organs as a platform for the bioengineering and regeneration of organoids for transplant purposes.
General Surgery, Transplantation Services
Medical Center Blvd
27157 Winston-Salem
United States
BIOCAPAN contact
Dr. Giuseppe Orlando
Email gorlando@wakehealth.edu
Tel: +13367160548
The people involved in the project are
Giuseppe Orlando, MD, PhD, Marie Curie Fellow, is Assistant Professor of Surgery and attending transplant surgeon at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
As a physician scientist, Professor Orlando specializes in kidney and pancreas transplantation, and abdominal organ bioengineering and regeneration. To date, his clinical contributions to the field of transplantation science have been in the field of steroid-free immunosuppression, and minimization of immunosuppression and clinical tolerance after liver and kidney transplantation. His contributions to regenerative medicine science include the development of platforms and technologies for a new generation bio-artificial kidney, endocrine pancreas, small bowel and face subunits. He has been successful in developing clinically relevant models for organ bio-engineering consisting of scaffolds produced through the decellularization of porcine or human organs. He has been instrumental in popularizing the concept of recycling discarded human organs for tissue engineering purposes and is currently proposing the use of discarded human kidneys and pancreas as platforms for kidney and endocrine pancreas bio-engineering and regeneration. The ultimate goal of these investigations is to provide “organs on demand” through the development of technologies that will eventually address the two most urgent needs in organ transplantation, namely, the identification of a new and potentially inexhaustible source of organs and immunosuppression-free transplantation.
Professor Orlando’s training both as a transplant surgeon and regenerative medicine scientist provides a unique background for his research to transition traditional organ transplantation towards a regenerative medicine paradigm. He has authored more than 200 research papers, review articles, and book chapters. His recent book “Regenerative Medicine Technologies Applied to Organ Transplantation”, Associated Press, New York 2013, is a benchmark in transplant and regenerative medicine literature. Internationally recognized as a leader in his field, Dr. Orlando is a member of numerous transplant societies and serves on the editorial board and as a reviewer for numerous journals and national, international and private grant awarding institutions.
Riccardo Tamburrini, MD, is a graduate from the School of Medicine of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome, Italy. He is licensed to practice in Italy and the UK, where he completed the first two years of residency in general surgery. During his training in the UK, he has developed a major interest in organ transplantation. He joined Dr. Orlando's team and BioCaPan in October 2015, with the intent to specialize in regenerative medicine technologies as they are applied to organ transplantation, and ultimately develop new platforms for organ bioengineering, regeneration and repair.
