Army Aims for New Six Million Dollar Man

Wired
Posted: 2008-05-21 12:47:04

Thirty years ago, the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man gave us the spectacle of a badly injured man totally rebuilt by scientists. Today the U.S. military is looking to do pretty much the same thing, for real, as I reported for World Politics Review:

The Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine -- an alliance of the military services, the Veterans Administration, the National Institutes of Health and around 250 doctors and researchers at 30 universities and hospitals -- formed in early 2007 with $50 million a year in government and private funding. Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army's top doctor, formally inaugurated the Institute at a Pentagon event on April 17.

This summer the institute will launch its first research programs, aiming to "put people back together" after nearly catastrophic injuries, according to Army Col. Robert Vandre, the Army's senior official for "combat casualty care research."

"Before we spent most of our budget on how keep soldiers alive after they've been wounded," Vandre told World Politics Review. "We had a little money for putting people back together, but not much." ...

Specific projects the new Regenerative Medicine Institute will support in coming years include efforts to grow "replacement parts" for damaged limbs and organs, using human and pig tissue cultures. These replacement parts might include new bone, muscle, skin, blood vessels and bits of organs. The Institute will also investigate ways of encouraging the human body to totally regrow lost limbs -- like a salamander -- starting with fingertips and, hopefully, working up to entire arms and legs.

The key to it all: stem cells.