MRCRM Seminar series - May 2023

Chronic, non-healing, and large wounds are debilitating conditions that burden patients and healthcare systems. Advanced wound care developments involving cell-based therapies are emerging as promising treatment options. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) have many advantages for such use: they can be easily obtained, are easy to culture in vitro to clinical scales, can be cryopreserved without loss of potency, and allogenic MSC can be transplanted without the need for immunosuppression. 

This project will use current clinically approved protocols for autologous bone-marrow derived MSC and examine their effectiveness in selected groups of patients with wound healing problems of the skin and eye. Autologous MSC will be isolated and propagated at the Helse Bergen GMP approved Ex Vivo facility. This will secure a regulatory approved production pipeline from the point of harvesting bone marrow throughout production and delivery to patients in this project's phase I clinical trials. Treatment effect will be measured using sophisticated and innovative methods, developing a future biomarker program for cell therapy of wounds. In addition, preclinical experiments to evaluate the safety and efficacy of allogenic cells will be performed with the long-term aim of using these in clinical trials.

Stian Kreken Almeland is a Consultant Plastic Surgeon at the Norwegian National Burn Center, Department of Plastic, Hand, and Reconstructive Surgery, Haukeland University Hospital. He is also an Associate Professor and Head of Research Group for Burn Care and Reconstructive Surgery at University of Bergen.