The Center for Regenerative Medicine is Pioneering Solutions to Complex Problems

OHSU Center for Regenerative Medicine

Hans Vatheuer, VFF’s founder, suffered from various heart conditions that diminished his quality of life in his later years. He traveled extensively exploring different medical treatments in an attempt at improving his own condition. Some of these treatments were quite innovative in health restoration. His journey eventually led him back to Portland, OR and the Oregon Health & Science University’s Center for Regenerative Medicine.

Dr. Kenton Gregory and OHSU

Dr. Gregory and his team are pioneering creative approaches to major health issues. Some of their current research includes regenerating tissue lost to aging, trauma, and disease. This approach focuses on using a patient’s own stem cells, amplifying their numbers, and delivering those cells to a specific location in the body for maximum effect. Those benefiting from this type of research include soldiers with battlefield injuries, burn victims, people with neurological disorders, and countless others with nervous, muscular, or vascular afflictions.

VFF began supporting OHSU and Dr. Gregory’s research in the field of cardiac regeneration. Congestive heart failure is a major condition caused by heart attacks or from cardiac toxicity from chemotherapy in cancer survivors. OHSU’s research for this condition looks at the practical, safe, and affordable solutions that can be easily implemented using mostly existing materials and methods.

One of the largest unsolved problems in medicine and surgery is getting enough oxygen into organs and tissues from a whole host of diseases including heart attacks, strokes, trauma and now COVID lung disease, where the lung simply cannot get oxygen into the bloodstream even with ventilator assistance.  VFF has initiated extremely novel research at  the CRM using an entirely new concept of oxygen delivery into organs and tissues of the body which is simple, safe and can be extremely inexpensive, even when the lungs have failed. The engineering simplicity and potential cost effectiveness of this potential new solution would have certainly pleased Hans Vatheuer from his perspective as an engineer.