People: Musculoskeletal Specialist Moves From NIH Institute To Baltimore Biotech Firm

To Baltimore Biotech Firm Author: FRANKLIN HOKE After a long career with the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), biomedical engineer Stephen L. Gordon, 51, has become vice president for advanced technology development at Osiris Therapeutics Inc., a Baltimore-based biotechnology company. Gordon was chief of the musculoskeletal diseases branch for more than 17 years, and, just prior to his move, served as acting director for the institute's extramural research programs. At Osiris, Gordon hopes to use his experience with the extramural research community to help identify investigators with whom company scientists can collaborate to advance the 29-employee, privately held firm's human mesenchymal stem cell therapeutics. Gordon notes that, in his position at NIAMS, he developed relationships with a great many of the investigators in relevant fields. "I think I know which ones we can make successful alliances with, which ones have certain things we need but don't have available in-house," Gordon says. "By working with either university or industrial collaborators, I hope to be able to make some of those bridges for the company." The mid-Atlantic area from Washington to Philadelphia, and including Baltimore, is well-populated with potential academic and corporate research partners, he observes. The human embryo forms different layers during development, Gordon explains, one of which is the mesenchymal layer. This layer is rich in a type of stem cell that has the capacity to differentiate into bone, muscle, tendon, ligament, and cartilage. The mesenchymal stem cell technology under development at Osiris aims to isolate and efficiently culture these cells, which are the precursor cells for many musculoskeletal tissues, for reintroduction into the body at specific disease or injury sites. BUILDING BRIDGES: At biotech Osiris Therapeutics Inc., Stephen L. Gordon will be establishing scientific collaborations with outside researchers. "You have a pretty high concentration of these cells when you're an embryo and when you're a neonate, but you rapidly start to have orders of magnitude fewer of these cells running around your body [as you age]," Gordon says. "A small sample of [adult] bone marrow will have some of these, and you can isolate them from the sample, even though there's only one in a couple of hundred million. You can isolate these mesenchymal stem cells and then have them grow up in a culture and multiply themselves, so that they can become enriched and concentrated." These cells, then, have the potential to regenerate defective musculoskeletal tissues at many sites throughout the body, he adds. Gordon received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Drexel University in 1967. An M.S. and Ph.D., both in biomedical engineering, followed in 1970 and 1973, also from Drexel. From 1974 to 1977, he lectured in mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland. After a three-year stint as chief of the biomedical engineering group in the safety research laboratory at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Washington, D.C., he moved to the National Institutes of Health in 1978 as a grants associate in the division of research grants. There, he participated in a training program for health-science administrators focusing on funding, management, and public-policy issues in biomedical research. In 1979, he became the first director of research on orthopedics at what was then known as the National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolism, and Digestive Diseases. NIAMS was formed in 1986, at which time he became chief of the musculoskeletal diseases branch. Gordon is also lead editor for a just-published textbook, Repetitive Motion Disorders of the Upper Extremity (Rosemont, Ill., American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, 1995). Among this class of disorders are carpal-tunnel syndrome, tennis elbow, and tension-neck syndrome. -- Franklin Hoke (The Scientist, Vol:9, #18, pg.17 , September 18, 1995) (Copyright © The Scientist, Inc.)

People: Musculoskeletal Specialist Moves From NIH Institute To Baltimore Biotech Firm

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