It was the kind of medical miracle that experts say will one day be commonplace. In June, an artificial trachea (windpipe), infused with a tracheal cancer patient’s own stem cells, was successfully transplanted into the 36-year-old patient without need of immunosuppressive drugs. Performed in Sweden, the procedure was undertaken because a growing, inoperable tumor threatened the patient’s ability to breathe. Experts say the surgery was a precursor to other, similar operations, in which specially treated synthetic body parts will be used to replace diseased internal organs such as coronary arteries, the esophagus, and the ureter.

Playing a key role in this landmark moment for regenerative medicine was Harvard Bioscience, Inc. of Holliston, Massachusetts, a company started by a Harvard Medical School professor in 1901 but brought back from the brink of bankruptcy by its current president David Green (MBA ’91).

Explaining that a natural trachea is shaped by its “scaffold” (its framework of cartilage and muscle), the Wall Street Journal (July 8, 2011) reported that the Harvard Bioscience device involved in the Swedish procedure was a “bioreactor, a shoe box–size device similar to a spinning rotisserie machine. The artificial scaffold was placed on the bioreactor, and stem cells extracted from the patient’s bone marrow were dripped onto the revolving scaffold for two days.”

Said Green, “Previously, our bioreactor had been used to seed a patient’s stem cells onto a donor trachea, so treatment was limited by the supply of donor organs. Now we know the bioreactor can seed a patient’s cells onto a manmade scaffold so patients will not have to wait for a suitable donor.” Green estimated that “the market for regenerative medicine devices could potentially grow to hundreds of millions of dollars annually.”

In the immediate future, Green said, “We expect further procedures to take place using this technique, with the first US surgeries occurring later this year. Beyond that, we see potential applications for other hollow organs, such as the esophagus, where cancer is 20 times more prevalent than in the trachea. Eventually, similar techniques will be applied to the big five solid organs — heart, lung, liver, kidney, and pancreas — though to date, successful solid organ regeneration and transplant has only been done in rats, at Massachusetts General Hospital.”

After HBS, Green worked at Monitor for a time, in which capacity he advised South Africa’s African National Congress, among other assignments. In 1996, he and a new management team took over Harvard Bioscience, then a financially troubled $9 million operation. The company, renamed Harvard Bioscience, Inc. — it has a licensing agreement with Harvard University — went public in 2000 and by 2010 had become a $108 million firm.

Asked how he came to decide to work in the health-care field, Green said, “I studied physics at Oxford and am a scientist by training. I also like business, and combining the two in a career is great. If you can do that and save lives, it’s a pretty fulfilling way to earn a living.”

Post a Comment