Regenerative Medicine in the State of Florida: Letter Outlining the Florida Organization for Regenerative Medicine

Advances in regenerative medicine are generating transformative solutions to many of today’s incurable medical conditions. These advances have resulted from interdisciplinary efforts across the biological sciences, medicine, and engineering, changes in the regulatory environment—including the passage of the 21st Century Cures Act—and ongoing efforts to drive industry standardization. Increasingly, these advances have been catalyzed by regional initiatives around the U.S. and the world aimed at expediting the discovery, translation, and commercialization of transformative treatments. The proliferation of new models like the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) in Canada, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), and the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI) in New Hampshire, among others, has inspired the creation of the Florida Organization for Regenerative Medicine (FORM), a nonprofit organization with a mission to facilitate translational research, commercialization, education, and therapeutic validation in the area of regenerative medicine with the ultimate aim of improving patient outcomes, creating high-quality jobs, and accelerating innovation through collaboration in the State of Florida and beyond. FORM is comprised ofmultiple strong and complementary clinical and research groups within Florida, including (from North to South) theMayo Clinic’s Center for RegenerativeMedicine; the University of Florida’s Center for Regenerative Medicine, which operates across the university and is based in the College of Medicine (CoM), and Institute for Cell and Tissue Science and Engineering (ICTSE) in the College of Engineering (CoE); Nova Southeastern University’s Cell Therapy Institute (CTI); Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (CMBB); and the University of Miami’s Diabetes Research Institute (DRI), Cell Transplant Center (CTC), and Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute (ISCI). Furthermore, FORM aims to convene nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies integral to the state’s regenerative medicine industry, including 42Bio, LLC, Akron Biotechnology, LLC, AxoGen, Corp, BioFlorida, Inc., Brammer Bio, LLC, CytoSen Therapeutics, Inc., Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc., Lifelink Foundation, Inc., Leidos Health (subsidiary of Leidos, Inc.), Longeveron, LLC, RTI Surgical, Inc., and Vestion, Inc., among others. FORMaims to leverage state, federal, and philanthropic funding to foster strong and integrative collaboration among academic, government and private sectors in order to accelerate activities necessary to establish the State of Florida as one of the hubs of this nascent and important industry. These activities include supporting translational research, facilitating the commercialization of therapeutics and engineered tissues, creating and driving workforce development initiatives, and validating novel treatments to support the safe and efficacious uptake of regenerativemedicine. The State of Florida is home to various institutions and companies active in the regenerative medicine space. Given the strength of its research and clinical institutions, the dynamism of its industrial base, and its size and demographics, the state can and should be a key driver in the emergence of this new paradigm in human health. FORM endeavors to convene the state’s leading institutions and companies to drive economic growth, accelerate innovation, and improve patient outcomes through the development and commercialization of regenerative therapies.