Month: April 2025

C-DOCTOR, the Center for Dental, Oral, & Craniofacial Tissue & Organ Regeneration, is a resource center aimed at accelerating promising tissue engineering/regenerative medicine therapies to broad clinical adoption. C-DOCTOR hosted the 2025 C-DOCTOR Spring Retreat took place on April 14–15, 2025, at the UCLA Meyer & Renee Luskin Conference Center in Los Angeles, CA. This retreat served as an excellent opportunity for attendees to connect and collaborate with other project teams, external advisors and consultants, as well as the C-DOCTOR leadership and NIDCR program staff. C-DOCTOR is supported by the National Institutes of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institutes of Health Award: U24DE029463. C-DOCTOR maintains a portfolio of eight interdisciplinary Translational Projects (ITP) teams working toward completing pre-clinical product development and FDA product clearance. One of these teams has recently achieved a successful IND filing and is actively working towards funding for clinical trials. Several other ITPs have had FDA interactions and will soon file IND/IDE packages. The event showcased the advancement of projects within C-DOCTOR’s ITP portfolio. C-DOCTOR celebrated significant ITP milestones: FDA interactions, commercialization/entrepreneurial progress, and fundraising for clinical trials. The 2025 C-DOCTOR retreat also featured sessions for ITP networking and for planning C-DOCTOR’s expansion beyond tissue engineering/regenerative medicine therapies in the dental, oral, and craniofacial space. C-DOCTOR and Looking Ahead C-DOCTOR begins to explore avenues to scale and expand its infrastructure for applications beyond tissue engineering in the DOC space (e.g., wearable sensors, diagnostics, implantables) and beyond the DOC space (e.g., neuromuscoskeletal system, glandular system). Invited speakers provided brief overviews of their projects or departmental/institutional capabilities to provide the foundation for scoping discussions to shape the future direction of C-DOCTOR. Attendees gained insights into emerging opportunities and shared insights for expanding the impact of C-DOCTOR Attendees also participated in breakout discussion sessions to further strategize on how to best position C-DOCTOR to address current and anticipated ITP needs as well as how to balance these needs with planned expansion opportunities. ITPs were able to provide feedback and communicate directly with C-DOCTOR leadership and NIDCR program staff. ITP Poster Session ITP teams participated in a poster session designed to foster collaboration with other teams and retreat attendees, including C-DOCTOR leadership, staff, and guests, while addressing questions related to their projects. The session provided a platform for teams to receive valuable feedback and insights. It also encouraged cross-team learning and sparked new ideas for advancing project goals.