May 2004, Issue 2

Tissue Regeneration, Inc. (TRI)
Greg Altman, PhD, president, founder, and CEO of TRI, has been this company's driving force since its inception. But he'll be the first to admit that he couldn't have done it alone. TRI is developing technology to address the enormous markets for bioengineered replacements for human tissues, such as the rotator cuff tendon and the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) of the knee. Says Altman, "the technology came out of two events in my life: one was playing football at Tufts and blowing out my knee, and the other was meeting David Kaplan and Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, who co-taught a class I was taking called Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering." David Kaplan, PhD, is chair of the Tufts Department of Biomedical Engineering and Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, PhD, is a principal research scientist at MIT and an adjunct professor in the Tufts Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. With their help, and with the advice and guidance of John Richmond, MD, the orthopedic surgeon who operated on his knee (Richmond is chairman of the Department of Orthopaedics at New England Baptist Hospital), Altman formulated a plan for bioengineering a replacement ACL.

In 1998 Altman began his PhD studies with Kaplan, incorporated TRI, and recruited a board of directors. Realizing that he couldn't get NIH funding without preliminary data, Altman raised $500,000 in seed money from friends and family. He then used this money to sponsor research at Tufts through an agreement worked out by the OTL&IC. Altman says the OTL&IC was instrumental in helping him create the company. "We worked together to establish milestones, and we've been achieving those milestones ever since." One of the milestones was achieved when Tufts granted TRI a license to develop the tissue engineering technology in 2000.

With promising preliminary data, Tufts was able to get two grants, one from the National Institutes of Health to study adult stem cells and biomechanical stimulation and the other from the National Science Foundation to build a bioreactor. TRI was also able to get two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grants. These funds have allowed Altman and Tufts to continue developing the technology.

Altman received his PhD in 2002 and now holds a part-time research faculty position in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, where he is advising four PhD students and one postdoctoral fellow. He spends most of his time working as president and CEO of TRI in the company's lab and office headquarters at 200 Boston Avenue in Medford.

Altman is very appreciative of the people who've mentored him through the process, including his scientific advisors, his board of directors, his football coaches, and staff at the OTL&IC. Altman attributes his success to resourcefulness, hard work, and diligence, and to the support of his friends and family.
For more information on TRI, go to http://ase.tufts.edu/biomedical/outreach/tissue.asp.