{"id":21588,"date":"2010-09-24T08:19:23","date_gmt":"2010-09-24T12:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=21588"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:40:01","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:40:01","slug":"a-new-approach-to-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/09\/a-new-approach-to-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Approach to Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Dr.<\/a>
Dr. David Rowe reviews research data with Xiaonan Xin. Photo by Lanny Nagler<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Health Center\u2019s Dr. David Rowe is confident that medical science will one day enable patients to re-grow bone and other tissues lost to disease, trauma, or aging.<\/p>\n

Rowe, director of the School of Dental Medicine\u2019s Center for Regenerative Medicine and Skeletal Development, notes, however, that this breakthrough \u2013 like others over the centuries \u2013 will be achieved only through rigorous, persistent research.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s a very difficult challenge,” he says. “A lot of work needs to be done before this becomes a reality. But we have the people, the tools, the resources, and the commitment to move the research forward.”<\/p>\n

The research Rowe and his colleagues at the center are engaged in focuses on how to use embryonic and adult stem cells to regenerate bone and other tissues in the body. The team has received funding for its work from the Connecticut Stem Cell Research Program, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n

Rowe himself was recently honored as the recipient of the 2010 UConn Health Center Board of Directors Faculty Recognition Award. The award recognizes Rowe\u2019s outstanding contributions to research, teaching, and mentoring.<\/p>\n

Treating Disease and Injury<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rowe\u2019s main research interest is in osteogenesis imperfecta. Commonly known as brittle bone disease, OI is a human genetic disease that causes bones to be extremely fragile and to fracture easily. He and his colleagues are working to discover how to treat the disease by correcting the genetic defect in the patient\u2019s own cells.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re looking for ways to identify the progenitor stem cells that exist in the body, remove them, engineer them, and put them back in so they\u2019ll function normally,” Rowe says.<\/p>\n

An offshoot of this research deals with treating traumatic injuries, especially those being sustained by members of the armed forces serving in war zones. The team has funding from the Department of Defense (DOD) to develop strategies for salvaging limbs that would otherwise have to be amputated, by putting into the patient progenitor cells that would support his or her ability to re-grow bone. The DOD is a major supporter of such research nationwide.<\/p>\n

“This is a huge area,” says Rowe. “Because of the war and the horrific injuries that in the past would have killed soldiers, there is enormous interest in coming up with strategies to try to salvage skeletons that have sustained such devastating injuries.”<\/p>\n

A Multidisciplinary Approach<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rowe notes that the Health Center has been a leader in connective tissue research for nearly 40 years, having recruited people with expertise in this field when the Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine were founded.<\/p>\n

“The Health Center \u2013 and UConn in general \u2013 has been a powerhouse nationally and internationally in this area,” he says.<\/p>\n

With such a high concentration of expertise available within the institution, Rowe and his colleagues in the Center for Regenerative Medicine and Skeletal Development have made it a point to cultivate a multidisciplinary approach: They work with tissue engineering specialists led by Dr. Cato Laurencin, dean of the UConn Medical School; they collaborate with the Department of Orthopedics\u2019 New England Musculoskeletal Institute, directed by Dr. Jay Lieberman; and they work with experts at the Storrs campus, including tissue engineers and specialists in materials science and computer science.<\/p>\n

“We see ourselves as having a central, coordinating role,” Rowe says. “We\u2019ve built the infrastructure and can do the testing and evaluation of various ideas.”<\/p>\n

The Next Breakthrough<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rowe sees his research on stem cells and regeneration as the next major step in the centuries-old evolution of medicine. Milestones in that evolution have included Hippocrates\u2019 discovery of anatomy; understanding of infectious disease and immunization; discovery of anesthesia and sterile technique, which gave rise to surgery; development of antibiotics and the pharmaceutical industry; and breakthroughs in molecular biology and genetics, which gave rise to new diagnostic tools and drugs.<\/p>\n

The next major breakthrough, he predicts, will be cell-based therapy, not only for regenerating bone, but in neuroscience, endocrinology, and other fields.<\/p>\n

“The breakthrough would be to take a patient\u2019s own cells, put them through a process to engineer them to be any cell in the body you want them to be, and put them back into the body and have them be a match,” Rowe says. “It\u2019s the ultimate in personalized, cell-based therapy. This is where medicine has to go, and we\u2019re at the dawn of that revolution.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UConn researchers are exploring how to re-engineer a patient’s cells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-21588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-28 05:24:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21588"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37082,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21588\/revisions\/37082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21588"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=21588"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=21588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}