Principal Investigator

Edward M. Schwarz, Ph.D. University of Rochester work Box 665 Rochester NY p 585-275-3063 edward_schwarz@urmc.rochester.edu

Honors & News

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March 18, 2009

URMC Scientists Awarded $6.8 Million in Stem Cell Research Grants

Stem Cells

Ten scientists from the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) have been awarded more than $6.8 million by the Empire State Stem Cell Board. The grants are for a wide range of research programs in the fields of neurological disorders, cancer, musculoskeletal diseases, the blood system, and efforts to understand the fundamental mechanics of stem cell biology.

Stem cell research for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine is a rapidly evolving field that holds great promise for the 21^st century. Drs. Hani Awad, Laura Calvi, Edward Puzas, Edward Schwarz, Xinping Zhang, Dirk Bohmann, James Palis, Richard Waugh and others have obtained funding for stem cell research to further their efforts in this area that include: understanding the molecular genetic characteristic of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), how to expand MSCs in vitro and in vivo, methods to impregnate matrices with MSCs to tissue engineer bone and cartilage, and how to image labeled MSCs.
January 27, 2009

New Bone Cement May Prevent Amputations

Acinetobacter baumannii

Old technologies, bone cement and a well known antibiotic, may effectively fight an emerging infection in soldiers with compound bone fractures, according to a study published online today in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research. Not common in the United States and not potentially fatal, A. baumannii OM had been largely ignored until recently by physicians and the pharmaceutical industry, which focuses on life-threatening infections that affect millions, not hundreds. Then military outbreaks of the infection started among American soldiers returning from Iraq in 2003, with the number of A. baumannii OM infections seen in field hospitals, and in stateside facilities receiving injured soldiers, growing.

If you apply the findings from two small studies to the entire U.S. military, which is a leap, perhaps 2,000 soldiers come into field hospitals with compound fractures each year that become infected with A. baumannii, said Edward Schwarz, Ph.D., professor of Orthopaedics within the Center for Musculoskeletal Research at the University of Rochester Medical Center. About a third of them go on to get a staph infection after they reach the hospital, with about a third of those, perhaps 200 soldiers, suffering infectious complications that could cost them a limb. Studies already underway in our lab seek to clarify how the initial infections could gradually be replaced by catastrophic MRSA, and to prove that we can save limbs by putting an established antibiotic into bone cement for the first time.
January 15, 2009

Researchers Detail How Aging Undermines Bone Healing

Hip Fracture

Researchers have unraveled crucial details of how aging causes broken bones to heal slowly, or not at all, according to study results published online today in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. The research team also successfully conducted preclinical tests on a potential new class of treatments designed to rescue healing capability lost to aging.

Along with Dr. Regis O'Keefe, the study effort was led by Amish Naik, Chao Xie, Michael Zuscik, Edward Schwarz, Hani Awad, J. Edward Puzas, Brendan Boyce and Xinping Zhang within the Center for Musculoskeletal Research, as well as by Paul Kingsley within the Department of Pediatrics, at the Medical Center.