Written by / Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
MMT 2009 Volume: 13 Issue: 7 (October)
U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command’s Orthopaedic Extremity Trauma Research Program signed an $18.4 million deal with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to serve as coordinator of data for research by 12 civilian medical centers and several military medical centers on treatment for wounded extremities.
“In order to improve practices and outcomes, a larger multi-center clinical trial is necessary because no one center is capable of enrolling enough patients,” Josh Wenke, program manager at the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, said in a statement. Hopkins School of Public Health Professer Ellen J. MacKenzie said her school will lead the design and analysis of the clinical trials the medical centers will conduct related to wounded extremities, as well as coordinate the collection of related data.
The 12 participating centers are the Boston University Medical Center, Florida Orthopaedic Institute, Carolinas Medical Center, Denver Health and Hospital Authority, OrthoIndy and Indiana Orthopaedic Hospital, Orthopaedic Associates of Michigan, Orthopaedic Trauma Institute at the University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco General Hospital, University of Maryland Medical Systems R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, University of Mississippi Medical Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, University of Washington Harborview Medical Center and Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
In related news, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology’s division of microbiology will together with the Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Combat Wound Initiative Program (CWIP) create a repository for research on combat-related infections. Called the CWIP Complex Wound Biospecimen Network Program, the effort includes the establishment of a “combat wound microbial culture collection” and “combat wound genomic repository.”
In treating wounds, doctors often perform multiple surgeries with the express purpose of reducing bacteria and eventually closing or covering the wound in a “durable non-complicated way,” said Walter Reed surgeon Colonel Alexander Stojadinovic in a press release.
“The way that we do that is to keep returning to the operating room, washing out bacteria, debriding the wound and changing dressings [and] getting the wound bed prepared for coverage,” he said, “with the ultimate goal of preventing wound-related complications and limb loss.”
As part of the effort, the AFIP’s division of wound biology and translational research will provide the CWIP with bioburden analysis, molecular diagnostics and therapeutics.
MHS Launches Female Physician Award
The Military Health System’s chief human capital office launched a new, annual “Building Stronger Female Physician Leaders in the MHS” award to identify and honor outstanding female physicians who have made significant contributions to the practice of military medicine and serve as exemplary role models for others.
“Female physicians are an integral part of the work of the MHS,” said Ellen Embrey, the acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. “This award represents our commitment to honor their contributions to military medicine, as well as an opportunity to motivate the next generation of young women physicians.”
To nominate an outstanding female physician, visit www.health.mil/people.
Making the Rounds: Recent DoD Contracts
• Palo Alto, Calif.-based EDS won an $8.1 million, one-year contract to do additional work on several Defense Health Information Management Systems that serve servicemembers participating in the DoD Wounded Warrior project. The contract calls for EDS to provide applications development for the Disability Evaluation System and the Armed Forces Longitudinal Technology Application, with the aim of improving data sharing between DoD and the Department of Veterans Affairs as well as giving clinical case managers better access to data in general.
• Research Triangle Park, N.C.-based Entegrion won two contracts worth about $4 million from the U.S. Navy for development of Entegrion’s Stasix, a dehydrated platelet-derived hemostatic agent that can be reconstituted and transfused when needed for the control of non-compressible internal bleeding, and Resusix, a dehydrated, pathogen-reduced, fresh human plasma for infusion in trauma patients to expand blood volume, correct abnormal coagulation function and support hemostasis.
• The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded Greeley, Colo.-based Hensel Phelps Construction contracts totaling $118.7 million to build two new barracks for 1,800 Army medical trainees studying at Fort Sam Houston’s Medical Education and Training Campus. Already under construction by the same company at the base are three dormitories for housing 3,600 Air Force and Navy medical personnel.
• Radnor, Pa.-based PolyMedix received a $1.6 million contract from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency to develop defensin-mimetic antibiotic compounds for combating anthrax and other biowarfare pathogens. The company said such compounds can mimic the biological properties of proteins for such purposes as disrupting bacterial cell membranes and limiting resistance to anti-pathogens.
• The U.S. Army Research Development and Engineering Command Contracting Center intends to negotiate a sole source contract with Mentor, Ohio-based Strategic Technology Enterprise to develop the Battlefield Asset Recovery Decontamination System, a “field adjustable” decontamination system to be used against all chemical and biological warfare agents.
U.S. Boosts Biodefense Funding in FY10
The U.S. government since 2001 has significantly increased funding for biodefense, according to a recent analysis by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Biosecurity.
A senior analyst at the center, Crystal Franco, notes in a recent article in the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism that $6.05 billion in the White House’s fiscal year 2010 budget request is set aside for biodefense, up $331 million from the year before, and about one-sixth the total is earmarked for programs strictly related to biodefense, with the remainder for programs that include other purposes, including infectious disease research and public preparedness.
Funding for the Defense Department in 2010 is budgeted at $687 billion, compared with nearly $624 billion in 2009. The 2010 amount for DoD represents about 10 percent of total funding, with the Department of Health and Human Services receiving the bulk of the funding, about 66 percent, followed by the Department of Homeland Security, with about 17 percent of the total requested budget.
Also related to the issue of biodefense, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recently released a report on “high containment laboratories” concluding that the expansion of such labs in the country following the anthrax attacks in 2001, when authorities recognized the need for more and better medical countermeasures, was done in an uncoordinated way by multiple federal and state agencies, academia and the private sector. The GAO said it had been unable to find estimates of how current capacities compare with possible future capabilities required for countering biothreats, or what might be the aggregate risks to date of the expansion in capabilities.
“As a consequence, no federal agency can determine whether high-containment laboratory capacity may now meet or exceed the national need or is at a level that can be operated safely,” the report concluded.
The full report is available online at www.gao.gov/new.items/d09574.pdf. ♦