November 20, 2011

Cato Laurencin

Dr. Cato Laurencin says that to meet the grand challenges in medicine, we need three things: "bold ideas; bold, smart people; and organizations that believe in us and in funding ideas that are bold." Describing tissue engineering as one of the bold ideas of the 1980s, he says his group is now trying to think in terms of "regenerative engineering," which he describes as "the integration of tissue engineering with advances in material science, stem cells sciences and developmental biology." Laurencin credits the NIAMS with providing ongoing financial support for such engineering, with widening the field, and for having the courage to believe in bold ideas.