USPS Publication Number 16300
T h is C o m mu n i t y N ewsp a p er is a pu bl ica t ion of E sca m bia / S a n t a Rosa B a r Assoc ia t ion
Se r v i ng t he Fi r st Jud icial Ci rcu it
Section A, Page 1
Vol. 18, No. 36
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September 12, 2018
1 Section, 12 Pages
Andrews Institute Awarded $1 Million Grant to Study Regenerative Medicine by Will Isern
T
he Andrews Research and Education Foundation at Andrews Institute for Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine recently received a one million dollar grant from the state of Florida to support regenerative medicine research endeavors. The state appropriation was approved in May and became available at the start of the fiscal year that began July 1.
The funding will support hiring personnel and purchasing equipment for the Andrews Institute Regenerative Medicine Center, a facility built in 2016 to
pioneer regenerative medicine treatments. The grant will fund new and ongoing regenerative medicine research studies. Regenerative medicine at Andrews Institute refers to the
utilization of biology-based treatments aimed at the repair and healing of injured tissues. Currently, this is limited to treatments using tissues from the patients themselves, including blood-based and bone-marrow based treatments as well as stem cells mobilized to the patients blood stream. Regenerative medicine of this kind has potential applications for aiding osteoarthritis, cartilage repair, healing optimization after surgery and more. “An analogy that works pretty well is to think about a golf bag,” orthopaedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist Dr. Adam Anz said. “There’s going to be different things in that golf bag and some of those are going to be cell technologies ¬– and there are many cells in our body that have stem capabilities – so stem cells are one of the fields that we’re studying intently. Others are blood products that we can create from your blood that have the potential for helping us adapt
to life’s changes. Sometimes that’s regenerating tissue, sometimes that’s just helping us adapt to change.” While industry support for research studies is critical, Anz said, the independent funding from the state of Florida will provide Andrews Institute physicians with flexibility to pursue research questions that may not have been supported otherwise “I think that this space is very foggy and needs some beacons of light and some light houses – and that’s our goal,” Anz said. “Our goal is to shed some light in this space and to help us all know what works and what doesn’t work, and what has evidence and is proven, and what still has yet to be proven. That’s important because I think sometimes we get a little ahead of our skis and we need to make sure everything is proven and has clear efficacy data.” Anz said there are several hundred organizations in the nation claiming to be stem cell centers, many of them in Florida, offering untested and sometimes unsafe stem cell treatments. In May, the FDA moved to shut down a Florida company that allegedly blinded three elderly women by giving them an unproven stem cell treatment. “I think the state sees the fog that exists with entities making claims in this space and the lack of real evidence behind those claims,” Anz
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said. “There are many places in the state that are doing that. If you think about entities that are saying we’re a stem cell clinic, I think there are 400 or some odd places in the United States that are claiming they’re stem cell clinics, but when your really nail them to the ground and say what evidence do you have behind this technology that you’re selling, you don’t get a lot of real concrete evidence. So that’s the deficiency that exists and there’s a good number of these clinics that exist in the state of Florida. I think state has realized that that’s a problem.” The Andrews Institute scientists will publish the results of their studies in sports medicine journals, thus contributing to the body of sports medicine knowledge. Anz said part of the reason why there is a lack of evidence-based treatments around regenerative medicine is because of a lack of funding. “Pharma isn’t real interested in helping, the implant companies aren’t real interested in helping and orthopaedic surgeons normally don’t have the vehicle to do anything, so I think we’re kind of in a perfect situation in terms of having a facility and foundation whose charge is to do exactly that,” he said. “The reason the foundations exists is to carry the torch of sports medicine and advance it.”
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