The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine has been chosen to lead a $75 million, five-year research contract with the US Defense Department known as AFIRM II. The Institute will oversee 14 research projects and a consortium of over 30 institutions focused on regenerative treatment for lost limbs and severe burns. Previous research contracts from AFIRM I helped develop new treatments to repair severe war injuries without long-term effects. The Institute is receiving $20 million from AFIRM II to further develop these regenerative therapies.

1. BY RICHARD CRAVER
Winston-Salem Journal
The Wake Forest Institute
for Regenerative Medicine has
been chosen to lead the second
phase of a high profile research
contract with the U.S. Defense
Department.
The institute, a part of Wake
Forest Baptist Medical Center,
said Friday it will be in charge
of a consortium of more than
30 research institutions. It will
handle 14 direct projects, half
of which are new directives
from the Armed Forces Insti-
tute of Regenerative Medicine.
The contract for what is
known as AFIRM II was signed
Sept. 15. Like the first phase,
the focus is on the use of regen-
erative treatment for lost limbs
or severe burns, the signature
injuries of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Dr. Anthony Atala, director
of the Wake Forest Institute,
said overall funding for the $75
million, five-year contract has
been budgeted even though
overall federal funding has
been reduced by the sequester.
The Wake Forest Institute is re-
ceiving about $20 million from
the contract.
By comparison, the first
phase of the Warrior Restora-
tion Consortium was funded
in April 2008 at $42.5 million
overall for five years.Wake For-
est collaborated with the Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh’s regen-
erative medicine institute on
one of the two AFIRM I consor-
tiums.
Maj. Gen. Joseph Carav-
alho Jr., commanding gen-
eral of the U.S. Army Medical
Research and Material Com-
mand, said in a statement that
“ultimately, we’d like to cre-
ate new treatments to repair
these severe injuries like they
never happened.”
“The science of regenerative
medicine is one of the ways we
fulfill our promise to service
members who put themselves
in harm’s way, that we will work
our hardest and do our very
best to take care of them.”
Atala and Dr. Edward Abra-
ham, dean of the Wake Forest
Winston-SalemJournal
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V O I C E S O F O U R T I M E P R E S E N T S
M I C H E L L E A L E X A N D E R
Tuesday, October 1, 2013 at 6 p.m.
Wait Chapel | voices.wfu.edu
THE NEW JIM CROW
MASS INCARCERATION IN THE AGE OF COLORBLINDNESS
Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine
Enhanced healing
WALT UNKS/JOURNAL
Jaehyun Kim, a research fellow in the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, shows how a
printer is used for skin regeneration in burn victims.
U.S. Defense
Department,
institute sign
$20M contract
Food
helpto
becut
forpoor
Amount recipients get
each month will drop
by about 7 percent
BY RICHARD CRAVER
Winston-Salem Journal
A funding cut is coming Nov. 1
for recipients of federal food and
nutrition services benefits, requir-
ing individuals and households
to further stretch their limited re-
sources, even as Forsyth County’s
poverty level continues to rise.
The cut comes because of the
Nov. 1 expiration of a benefit in-
crease from the 2009 American Re-
covery and Reinvestment Act, the
N.C. Department of Health and
Human Services said Friday.
The act temporarily increased
the benefits by an average of $36
a month for a household with four
members, or by $9 per individual.
The adjustment reduces benefits
for households that receive Sim-
plified Nutritional Assistance Pro-
gram (SNAP) allotments, formerly
known as food stamps.
For Forsyth County recipients,
the average SNAP benefit is $140
a month for an individual and
$240 for a household with a single
Polling site
concerns
not on
agenda
BY BERTRAND M. GUTIERREZ
Winston-Salem Journal
Accessibility. Flooding. Power.
All could be potential issues at
the Legends building — the polling
place at Appalachian State Univer-
sity selected Sept. 4 by the Watau-
ga County Board of
Elections in a con-
tentious vote of 2-
1, split along party
lines.
Jane Hodges, the
elections director
who has 27 years
of experience, said
in an email to the
board recently that they should
consider dealing with those poten-
tial issues at the board’s next meet-
ingWednesday — to no avail.
“Specifically, we need to discuss
what actions should be taken re-
garding parking lot repavement,
van accessibility, and the campus
pathway to the sight (sic),” Hodg-
es said in the email, dated Sept. 23.
A copy of the email was obtained
by the Winston-Salem Journal
OnFacebook
What do you think the
Watauga board should
do at its meeting on
Wednesday? Tell us at Facebook.
com/WinstonSalemJournal.
Hodges
Gift to N.C. State totals $50 million
McClatchy Tribune
RALEIGH — N.C. State University has re-
ceived the largest single gift in its history
— $50 million to provide scholarships, the
school’s administration and the Park Foun-
dation announced Friday.
The donation puts the
university closer to funding
its most prestigious schol-
arships “in perpetuity,” said
Chancellor RandyWoodson.
“The earnings from the
endowment will ensure, as
long as there’s an N.C. State
University, that there will be
a Park Scholars program that
funds scholarships to the best and bright-
est students,” he said.
Until now, the Park Foundation — cre-
ated by the late Roy Park, a Dobson na-
tive and member of the class of 1931 — has
sustained the scholarship program with
yearly grants. Friday’s announcement puts
the scholarship in the university’s hands.
NCSU plans to raise another $100 million
and then fund the scholarships indefinitely
with investment profits from the new pool
of money.
The Park program provides about 45 full-
ride, merit-based scholarships a year.
The gift is the high-water mark of Wood-
son’s three-year push to supplement public
money and tuition with private backing. In
his three years on the job, the university has
grown its endowment almost 70 percent, to
$769 million.
The chancellor shed “a few tears of joy”
in his office when he heard this spring that
the deal had been finalized, he said.
The $50 million sum matches the largest
single gift ever received by rival UNC Cha-
pel Hill, and it should qualify for a spot on
The Chronicle of Higher Education’s list of
the largest private gifts to higher education,
which ranges from $50 million to $600 mil-
lion for single schools in the United States.
“You do not hear of publics, very often at
all, getting gifts of that size,” said Rita Kirsh-
stein, director of the Delta Costs Project on
college spending. Schools have been look-
ing for private resources, she said, because
“state appropriations have plummeted.”
“I think schools have gotten more ag-
gressive; publics have gotten more aggres-
sive in reaching out to alumni in general.”
Friendsandalumnisupport
NCSU’s state budget appropriation fell
by 11 percent between fiscal 2008 and fiscal
2012. It has rebounded back toward pre-re-
cession levels in the past year, butWoodson
thinks the school should continue to find
private supplements.
“This is another example that in a very
difficult economy, when state funding for
higher education is a challenge, that our
friends and our alumni and supporters are
working hard to provide the additional pri-
vate resources that are needed to keep the
university strong,”Woodson said.
And there’s little chance, he argued, that
state legislators would simply see that new
private money as a replacement for tax dol-
lars.
“Given where we are relative to our peers
across the county, I think we have a long
Woodson
Park Foundation money to fund scholarships
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“You do not hear of publics,
very often at all, getting
gifts of that size.”
Rita Kirshstein
director of Delta Costs Project on college spending