Future looks bright

Getting a provincial Class D tissue bank designation has researchers at the Lake Superior Centre for Regenerative Medicine saying the sky is the limit when it comes to their future.

Officials at the not-for-profit company said on Friday they’re envisioning a time when they collect tissue from as many as 200 donors a year, supplying dozens of hospitals and dentists with valuable tissue used in surgery.

Without the designation, ReGen Med would likely have gone out of business, said CEO Bob Thayer, noting it allows them to accept Ontario-based donor bodies that provide the majority of the tissue and bone needed to economically survive.

“Before we had our designation we had Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre sitting right next door, five minutes away. Families signed and they received donors. Very infrequently a surgical team would be sent from Toronto. That would happen once or twice a year for tissue and bone (extraction),” said Thayer, aware of the importance of tissue donation thanks to a double hip replacement operation.  

“All of those people who signed (donor cards), were not retrieved. We are in a position here where we actually had an agreement with a Manitoba tissue bank, where we could receive a donor from Manitoba. We could process that donor into allografts, but we could not do it for Thunder Bay Regional, we couldn’t do it for Ottawa and we couldn’t do it for Kingston or any other tissue bank in Ontario.”

That’s all changed.

“How critical is that? It meant a business plan that can be executed. It meant the Lake Superior Centre for Regenerative Medicine could continue to exist. If we didn’t get the designation we probably would not be here today,” Thayer said.

They’re also hoping to become the field’s main player in Ontario, as Canadian Blood Services looks to amalgamate services.

“There’s the potential for us to become the centralized tissue and bone bank, if not the only one, then one of two, for the province of Ontario,” said Thayer after officially accepting the designation from the Trillium Gift of Life Network.

Thayer went on to say there is a tremendous shortage of bone and tissue allografts available in Canada, with more than $19 million being shipped to the U.S. annually to make up the shortfall.

“Canadian bone and tissue banks are meeting about five per cent of the need,” he said, adding that ReGen Med has perfected ways of getting up to 83 allografts – a graft of tissue obtained from a human donor and surgically implanted into a recipient – per donor body.
Most other centres in Canada average about five, he said.

American tissue supplies are not always available. To break even, Thayer said they need to be able to process 40 bodies a year, with the capacity to quintuple that, with profits being turned back into the research community to further the city’s push for a knowledge-based economy.

Mayor Keith Hobbs, one of several dignitaries on hand for Friday’s announcement, said as a former police officer, he’s seen plenty of fatalities and gruesome scenes, and knowing others might benefit from future tragedies.

“It really hit home to me,” he said, recalling a tour of ReGen Med’s Munro Street facility shortly after he was elected last fall. “I had dealt with all the death and sorry, but something really good can come from it now.”

The company expects to add as many as 25 new staff members when up to capacity. Presently they have seven employees.