Winter 2011 — Vol. 64, No. 1

 

by Liz Newall

Clemson University innovation allows the medical field to reach patients in leaps rather than small steps.

An engineering graphics professor finds a way to help patients recovering from facial cancer. He teams up with a prosthodontist to customize and speed the production of facial prosthetics, helping restore patients' self-confidence and emotional health.

A bioengineer works with a veterinary sciences professor with expertise in mammary stem cells to improve understanding of breast cancer in humans and to create engineered tissue for pinpointed research and better treatment.

A chemist develops ultra-bright nanoparticles with fluorescent dye molecules that make it possible to track individual virus particles inside a living cell with amazing precision. His work will help other scientists tracking plaques and fibrils in the brain associated with Alzheimer's and other diseases.

An expert in engineering bone tissue works with an orthopedic surgeon on implants, creating bone plugs and developing ways to fix them into place in defects. Her work will help trauma patients regain mobility and function more quickly.

How do experts in seemingly unrelated fields discover these life-changing connections that affect us all? They cross paths, run into each other, find new possibilities outside their own boundaries.

New ideas frequently occur at the intersection of seemingly unrelated concepts or fields. Clemson professor and alumnus Karen Burg (M '92, PhD '96) takes it a step further calling it a welcome collision.

"Often it takes a collision of different perspectives to have that 'Aha!' moment," says Burg, whose team works with experts not only campuswide and statewide but also nationally and internationally. "Innovation at the boundary of disciplines allows a field to move forward in leaps rather than slow steps."

Burg directs Clemson's Institute for Biological Interfaces of Engineering — IBIOE, for short, pronounced "I-bio-E." The institute's mission is to develop clinically relevant biomaterials technology and products for disease management and (this is where we come in) to apply this research to patient care.

Oral and maxillofacial prosthodontist Betsy Davis (right) and assistant Kathy Hood of MUSC during procedure

 

New model for medical leaps

IBIOE grew from this desire to facilitate the collision of different perspectives — bigger breakthroughs in the lab that are more quickly applied in the field.

The institute is a South Carolina-based interdisciplinary research and educational unit, spanning Clemson's academic colleges. And as you can guess by now — it's not your typical university research unit.

It isn't housed in a college or in a department or restricted by boundaries associated with academic units. And it doesn't depend on tenured or tenure-track faculty members who have allegiance to a discipline and who dedicate time to institutes only on an "as available" basis.

With the IBIOE model, research is built around permanent research faculty members who are 100 percent research-focused and who, therefore, understand and can meet timelines, goals, industry requirements and other constraints. These faculty members can then connect with tenured and tenure-track faculty, drawing them in as needed.

IBIOE faculty collaborators range from engineering to biological sciences, psychology to statistics, computer science to management.

Leading the researchers, along with Burg, is IBIOE deputy director Guigen Zhang, an expert in stem cell tissue engineering, multiphysics modeling and micro/nano bioengineering. He recently received a $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through IBIOE to help fund work to create low-cost diagnostic tools for doctors in developing countries.

Clemson IBIOE graduate students Erik Bland and Erin McCave

From scientist to surgeon

The collaborative nature of IBIOE is designed not only to make cutting-edge breakthroughs in biomaterials technologies, but also to get them into the hands of those who can use them to change lives.

In the process, the institute is becoming a go-to electronic research and training "collaboratory" to facilitate surgeon-researcher interactions and accelerate advanced technologies to the clinic.

To do so, the institute collaborates with foundations, other universities, industry and centers on various research initiatives and projects. In addition to the Gates Foundation grant for diagnostic tools, the National Science Foundation has awarded $2 million to IBIOE to build tissue models to study the relationship between low oxygen tumor environments and the progression of cancer.

Avon Foundation for Women has granted IBIOE $195,000 to support research aimed at improving reconstructive breast surgery using engineered tissue that contains anti-cancer properties. And the Department of Defense has awarded $2.9 million for developing engineered breast tissue that will be used to study the causes, progression and treatment of breast cancer.

Another collaborator is the AO Foundation (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Osteosynthesefragen), which supports basic scientific, pre-clinical and clinical research in all areas of trauma, surgery of the musculoskeletal system and related problems. This Swiss foundation has provided continued grant funding to IBIOE to build bone models and technology to test new methods of improving bone repair in large bone defects.

Synthes — a global medical device company specializing in the instruments, implants and biomaterials for the surgical fixation, correction and regeneration of the human skeleton and its soft tissues — is sponsoring IBIOE biomaterials research in the area of trauma management and reconstruction.

IBIOE faculty Tim Burg, director Karen Burg, faculty Rick Groff and graduate student Bryant Mersereau (graduated in May 2010)

IBIOE also works with the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Center for Functional Outcomes and Reconstructive Biotechnology, a clinical research center devoted to returning function and quality of life to patients who have lost oral/facial structures. MUSC clinicians are working with IBIOE faculty to develop hard and soft tissue cell-based reconstructive therapies.

Other IBIOE medical collaborators are found at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine (Miami, Fla.), the Indiana University School of Medicine (Indianapolis, Ind.) and Carolinas Medical Center (Charlotte, N.C.). Research focus areas span from bone reconstruction to cancer therapy optimization, but the goal is the same — providing leading-edge research to benefit the patients. The diversity of medical partners allows the blending of ideas to create uniquely relevant research.

University of North Carolina (UNC) Department of Statistics and Operations Research researchers are working with IBIOE faculty in the development and analysis of tools to enable biomodeling and evaluation of cell-based systems.

IBIOE is also collaborating with the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC-C) Department of Biology to develop new 3-D tissue systems for developmental biology studies, including mechanisms of cancer metastasis, vascular and immune interactions during cancer growth.

Making such research and collaboration possible is Clemson's Computing and Information Technology (CCIT). CCIT maintains an outreach program that supports the computing activities of various state and federal agencies, educational institutions and private companies. Its staff members are working with IBIOE researchers to develop new, immersive research environments.

Doing as teaching

The educational goal of the institute is to immerse students and medical residents in a technically diverse environment to hone technical, entrepreneurial, communication, leadership and teamwork skills.

IBIOE is heavily involved in community outreach and education through performing biomedical demonstrations. These activities help IBIOE researchers transfer their work from the lab to the real world for others to see firsthand.

The institute's role in teacher education reaches across South Carolina through National Science Foundation-sponsored summer training programs for teachers based on the Clemson campus, all the way to Massachusetts through the Boston Museum of Science Teacher Training seminars.

IBIOE students, with the help of IBIOE faculty members, have developed half a dozen classroom-friendly modules that convey complex biomedical ideas that teachers can incorporate in the classroom while helping IBIOE researchers become better presenters and communicators outside the laboratory setting.

"Community engagement programs help me communicate with the general public because I use different terminology when talking to a fourth-grader than I do when I'm talking to another scientist," says IBIOE graduate student researcher Cheryl Gomillion. "It provides me with a completely different professional development experience."

In addition to students' involvement in IBIOE work through their professors, the institute is launching a new training program — Call Me Doctor™. This professional development intensive program supports high-achieving minority students pursuing doctoral studies through IBIOE; the long-term goal is to institutionalize the program and facilitate widespread participation from non-IBIOE students.

Call Me Doctor Fellows are paired with a mentor/adviser and work in the IBIOE collaborative, team-based research and training environment.

Part of the Call Me Doctor student's experience is partnering with educators, other students and faculty mentors to deliver cutting-edge science and engineering concepts to the community and K-12.

Huge business potential

Another of IBIOE's goals is to maximize economic development for South Carolina through the establishment of an internationally recognized Medical Research Center with industrial partners.

Business opportunities are both huge and proven. An example is KIYATEC, a company founded by Matt Gevaert M '99, PhD '03 and David Orr PhD '06 in 2005, based on an IBIOE technology.

KIYATEC's corporate mission to commercialize novel 3-D cell culture technology developed in IBIOE's laboratories. It was awarded the 2007 Five Ventures innovation award, and its founders were recently featured among "Twelve People Whose Technology Will Change the World" in Greenville Business Magazine (April 2010).

KIYATEC personnel work to deliver enabling 3-D cell culture tools for the pharmaceutical, biomedical and life science industries. These efforts will ultimately provide researchers and clinicians with advanced in vitro diagnostics for improved understanding in cell and systems biology, drug development and clinical diagnosis.

"The underlying principle of KIYATEC — as IBIOE researchers on the front edge of these discoveries have found — is that there are great advantages in growing cells in three dimensions," says KIYATEC CEO Gevaert. "KIYATEC's proximity to IBIOE provides a work force development advantage. IBIOE exposes students to disparate areas of expertise and produces students that have exactly the skill set that we require for KIYATEC."

IBIOE continually looks for business opportunities and therefore often collaborates with Clemson's Arthur M. Spiro Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership. The Spiro Institute supports educational, research and outreach programs that promote entrepreneurial activity and economic development of the region, state and nation.

IBIOE researchers, in collaboration with the students and faculty members of the Spiro Institute, are involved in intellectual property process, including the development of more spinoff companies and forecasting of new business opportunities. For example, a Spiro MBA team evaluated IBIOE's tissue test systems technologies last year.

"They developed a fantastic market analysis," says Burg. "One of the students from that team is beginning similar analysis of an absorbable tissue expander that we are assessing for craniofacial application as well as breast tissue engineering. Spiro students will also be developing a marketing piece to facilitate technology transfer to industry."

To make the most of economic development opportunities, IBIOE has appointed Clemson University's first Professor of the Practice — an expert whose industry or business background aids the University's mission — Steve Hunter. Hunter, who spent 39 years with General Electric, is helping pair private-sector connections with its core researchers and will mentor students on real-world applications for research.

Perhaps the greatest stamp of approval for the new research model comes from the state. IBIOE was awarded a $6 million Center of Economic Excellence last year in Tissue Systems Characterization. The General Assembly provides dollar-for-dollar state funding through the S.C. Education Lottery to match non-state investment to support an Endowed Chairs program. The program recruits world-class faculty members to lead key research areas to stimulate South Carolina's economy and create high-tech jobs that raise per capita income at all levels. Clemson has recruited five internationally recognized scholars to its Endowed Chairs program.

The institute is working to raise matching funds so that the University can recruit an endowed chair for IBIOE — someone with human cell biology credentials — as a permanent research faculty member.

Of course, as important as economic development is, the overriding goal is still healing.

Orthopedic surgeon James Kellam of Carolinas Medical Center, who collaborates with Burg and the team, says: "While the science of IBIOE is cutting-edge and complex — and the future implications are mind boggling — the underlying goal is fundamental.

"This interaction and the networking and the creation of the institute involve the surgeon with the scientist, and the surgeon's clinical problem drives the issues that the scientist is solving. So this allows us to take these discoveries and not keep them in the research lab — to move them out to the public and to use them to make a better life for people — that's what this is all about."

For more on the Institute for Biological Interfaces of Engineering, go to clemson.edu/ibioe or call 864-656-5395.