NUI unit leads in development of tissue repair

REMEDI facility: The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mr Micheál Martin, is to mark the official opening of the Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI) at NUI Galway. It is using advanced technologies to develop therapies for tissue repair and regeneration to tackle incurable human diseases, particularly heart disease.

A number of research projects combining adult stem cell and gene therapy are already underway at REMEDI which is the only centre in Europe to combine the two technologies.

Current research is focusing on the development of therapies for cardiovascular, arthritic and neuronal diseases (such as Parkinson's disease, alzheimer's and spinal chord injury) which will lead to less invasive clinical procedures.

The REMEDI Institute was established in 2004 through a Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Science Engineering and Technology award and industry funding, totalling €19 million. It is located in a state-of-the-art facility at the Higher Education Authority/EU-funded National Centre for Biomedical Engineering Science at NUI Galway.

Director of REMEDI and professor of medicine and health sciences at NUI Galway, Tim O'Brien, said it had spent most of the first year of the project recruiting staff, including adult stem researchers from the US and gene therapy researchers from Germany.

There are 60 people employed at the facility and another 10 people are due to start work at REMEDI over the next few weeks.

One of the projects at the institute involves the isolation and characterisation of adult stem cells from bone marrow.

Prof O'Brien said: "We are trying to isolate specific stem cell populations to see what controls the type of cell they ultimately become, i.e. why one cell becomes a heart cell and another becomes a bone or cartilage cell."

On the gene therapy side, a number of scientists are working with different viruses, including one called the lenti-virus which they are using as carriers or "vectors" to deliver genes into cells.

"These viruses will be more effective in delivering the gene into a special cell. Right now, that gene can go anywhere in the chromosome, but we are trying to target it to a very specific and safe site in the chromosome and not in a site where it will cause bad side effects," said Prof O'Brien.

The institute is also involved in a number of other projects with some of its academic partners in Ireland, including the Immunology Institute at NUI Maynooth.

Pointing out that immunology was an important part of stem cell and virus-based therapies, Prof O'Brien said: "If you put a virus into a person, they may mount an immune response. We are providing researchers in Maynooth with the cells and viruses and they are investigating the immune responses. If you are taking stem cells from one person to treat another, there is the potential that they will reject them, just like a transplant heart or lung can be rejected. We are working on one particular type of stem cell that may not have that problem."

While Prof O'Brien could not say when the therapies would be ready for use on patients, he said it was not a process that would happen overnight.